


World Well Worn, and Gone

by Skull_Bearer



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Aftermath of Far Harbor, Arcadia - Freeform, Caretaking, Chinese New Year, Cormac McCarthy, Cuddles, Dangerous Minds, Drifting, Eating Disorders, Existential Angst, Flashbacks, Fluff, Gratuitous Destruction of Meaningful Scenery, M/M, Main plot, Mama Murphy is Not Amused, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, NSFW, Nate and Nick finds a kink shop, Nate stop breaking shit, Nate sucks as a dad, Nick POV, Nick's existential crisis, Old World Blues, Other Nick was no saint, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Poor Nick, Porn, Robot Sex, Sex Toys, Some angst, Spa Day, The Glowing Sea, but nick loves him anyway, but then Shaun sucks generally so it's only fair, children of atom, far harbour spoilers, favourite book, more scenery destruction, nate is not a happy bunny, pre-war trauma, the 50s SUCKED, the Road, there is sex, you want the 50s you get the 50s
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-20
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-09-25 18:57:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9839480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skull_Bearer/pseuds/Skull_Bearer
Summary: Nick Valentine is a broken synth in a broken world, and he loves a broken man.





	1. Child of Atom

This is Nick’s favorite part of the day. It’s quiet when they come to Sanctuary, and he watches Nate, awaiting for it.

Nate drops the heavy sack of scraps and scavs, raises long, languid arms above his head and groans. Long and drawn out. “’m getting water, want some?”

Nick rubs the raw skin of his good hand, the stiff steel knuckles of the bad. “If you’re carrying it.”

“I’m offering.” The heavy, tattered coat falls from his shoulders. Without the bulk of it, or the clasps and hefts of his armor, his shirt falls straight from the juts of his shoulderblades, to the tight cinch of his belt.

Maybe it’s optimism, but Nick digs out two mutifruit from his bag and sets them on the bed. He sits down beside them, and starts on a quick inventory of what they’ve got. Beside the ton and a half of scrap metal Nate insists on picking up from everywhere they go, they are getting low on ammunition. the scrap goes into making amazing weapons, but very hungry ones.

Nate walks in slowly, the two buckets wallowing at the end of their ropes. He sets one down in front of Nick with a grunt. “Anything you want in there?”

“If you find a way of making ammunition anytime soon, give me the heads up.” Nick glances through his own stash, fifty or so rounds. “We’re gonna need to go shopping.”

“Yep,” Nate sits beside him, lifts his arms, stretches. Yawns. “Tomorrow. Maybe Cricket’ll be in.” He scratches the ragged cut at the back of his head, and bends over the bucket.

And that. That right there. That’s Nick’s favorite moment of all.

Nate has a rag for the purpose, he soaks it, squeezes it. The water’s still warm from the generator, steaming gently. Nate stretches his arm down and starts on it, the rag cutting long, deep swathes into the uniform grey-brown of dirt and radiation, leaving skin the colour of bright, burnished copper trailing behind.

Nate hums something soft and vocaless deep in his throat, rich with pleasure. The rag runs over the thin bones of his wrists,, the long, lanky fingers, the overlarge knots of knuckle and finger joints. In the lamplight of the old shack, his hands are heavy, sweet red-brown, the color of earth from an Earth no longer there. Nate glances at him, eyes glinting in amusement. “It’s getting cold. You want cold water, you can wash in the river.”

Nick grins. His coat comes off with a little reluctance still, but Nate isn’t looking, slapping the soaked rag over his neck now, running over the stiff, salt and dirt spikes of his hair. Nick does what he can with his own hands, but the skin of his right is so stained that it’s hard to tell what is dirt and what’s just long standing discoloration. The water’s uncomfortably hot on the bones of his right, he lets the wet cloth hangs to cool it before running it over the struts and joints. The heat of it shoots right up the conductive metal and makes his elbow ache.

“Are those for me?” Nate is pulling his boots off, he’s spotted the fruit.

“They sure ain’t for me.” Nick rolls up his sleeves, carefully wipes down the joints of his bad arm, the sensation is raw on exposed bones and wiring, he winces. “Thought you might want them for your project.”

Nate pulls a face. He rubs wet fingers over the brand on his cheek. The symbol of Atom is scorched black, and for all Nate insists it didn’t hurt, it makes something twist inside Nick’s circuits anyway.

“The bounty of Atom.” His lips lift with the irony. His teeth are neat and white as they sink into the fruit, juice welling up and staining his mouth purple and pink and reminding Nick, bizarrely, of Deathclaw he had once seen, feasting on the body of a mirelurk. The blood had been that same purple, and there’s something of the Deathclaw in Nate’s bright amber eyes.

He finishes the fruit, and munches his way half heartedly through the second. “I don’t suppose it counts if I just chew and spit it out?” He looks at the half finished fruit.

“I wouldn’t let any of the faithful hear you say that.” Nick smiles and for all his own doubts over Nate’s conversion, he’s glad of this particular stricture in Atom’s faith. Eat of the bounty of Atom. That is, fruit that was irradiated to the point of growing legs and running away.

But they could cope with radiation. That was what radaway was for. What Nick will be endlessly thankful for the faithful of Atom for, is that they actually made Nate eat something. Apparently a human really could survive on nothing but purified water and stimpacks, if they didn’t mind looking like the human version of Gen 1 synth, at least.

There’s a bit more strength to Nate’s shoulders now, since Far Harbor, a bit more solidity to his legs as he pulls his pants up and puts his feet into the bucket with a sigh. The husk of the fruit is tossed out of the window towards the compost heap. The rag comes out again, soaps up Nate’s legs, the staring jut of his shinbone and the muscles strapped taut under his skin.

Doubled over, the shirt pulls tight over Nate’s back, shoulders, the knuckles of his spine. Nick runs a finger down the knobbles. “Get anymore obvious, and I could get a tune out of them.”

“Fuck you.” Nate twists his head up to grin at him and yes. Yes. This is why Nick is here. This is why he is grateful to the Children of Atom, to the Minutemen, to this whole ruined, broken world as he is to to anyone or anything that can make Nate look like that. Who make him just so. Damn. Happy.

And he wears happiness so well. Like the sun, behind those dancing, bird of prey eyes. Sunlight on water, on broken metal, on smashed glass. Bright and brilliant and sharp and glorious and Nick cannot help but smile back, cannot help but reach out his hand and Nate sits up, catches Nick’s hand and his whole body is open to him. Liquid and easy with the sheer joy.

Nate shifts over, knocks the bucket away with a quick cast of his foot and brings his feet up on the bed. Just this close and Nick can feel him, the pulseline at his wrist, Under Nick’s thumb, the slight uptick in breaths per minute, the warm flush creeping up Nate’s chest and turning the skin there russet red, burnt umber.

If there ever needed a justification for what old, human Nick would have called ‘mixing the races’ and others back then had rather worse terms for, that justification is Nathaniel Brooks.

His fingers touch Nick just above where his collarbone would have been if he had one. Just below the crest of his shoulder where a Gunner once took offense at his existence and left him with a three inch long line of raw metal where the skin was scoured off. Nate’s fingers land soft as moth wings, the heat of them sharp, sweet.

Nate wavers, one hand still caught in the trap of Nick’s steel ones. His fingers trace around the gash in Nick’s shoulder, trace around to the base of his throat. His shoulders are drawn up in a hawk’s hunch, eyes bright with a same intent and focus as before a shot.

The kiss, when it comes, is sweet. Nick can only half taste it, the sensors in his mouth are mostly burnt out or were never fixed in properly in the first place, but the sweetness is in the contact, the hungry push of Nate’s teeth, the press of his thumb against the complex knot of wires at Nick’s throat that burst with a wave of warm, delicious sensation. Nick closes his eyes, smiles against Nate’s mouth.

There is still a part of him that wonders what the hell Nate is getting out of this. Nick’s mouth dry and slick plastic inside, no doubt tasting mostly of coolant and cigarettes, but when Nate breaks the kiss to steady himself, pull his hand from Nick’s and starts pulling off the last few layers between them, he’s smiling. That brilliant, starburst smile, blooming like the false sun he worships for a god.

And, by God or Atom or anyone out there- if Nick can make someone that happy just by kissing them, then there has to be a point to him after all.

Nate shucks off his shirt and pants, kicks them into the nest of blankets and curls up against Nick. For such a tall man, he can pack himself away to quite a small space, small enough for Nick to put his arms around easily, fit against him, mold his more yielding body against Nick’s less forgiving one until Nick can feel Nate’s heart beating through every inch of his own body and Nate can feel the clicks and whirs of Nick’s systems through every nerve and Nick tightens his grip by increments, tiny degrees and he can believe this is his. This is something he can have. Whole, holy and entire.

Nate is very still, limp and quiet and eyes closed as though trying to memorise every fragment of this. Register every fragment in his still uncertain mind and never let anyone take it away. Nick breathes in the hot rad small of Nate’s hair, does the same. This is something they can understand, the two of them. Maybe no one else, certainly no one who isn’t a synth, but there are no questions, no need for answers.

Sometimes, things can be so bad that you need these moments, these memories.

Then Nate looks up, a brief darting motion, he smiles like quicksilver and snatches another kiss, fast as breathing. “I got something for you.”

And just like that, Nick is sitting there with empty arms and Nate is across the room to his pack. “Saw it as we were coming in.” He continues, digging in, “But wanted to wait under we had some light. Here-” he pulls something free, dances back to the bed and dives back in, snuggling under Nicks arm as though he had never left. “For you.”

It’s a mutifruit flower, pale purple, the petals a little crushed from it’s bumpy journey in Nate’s pack. Nick curls his metal fingers around it, feels every vein on the little thing, the fine fur on the stem. It has no scent, but the crushed petals are damp, smell of falling rain. “Nate-” Nate has his eyes closed, face turned into Nick’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

“You’ll put it with the others?”

“Sure.” He’s getting quite the botanical collection, what with this whim of Nate’s to give him every flower they pass on their travels. Hubflowers, mutifruits, wild carrots, even a few pickings from the vast, nodding blooms of mutated lilac they had once found. Nick would like to say he isn’t sentimental, but-

“You’re going to wreck my reputation.” He kisses the top of Nate’s head.

“Nah,” Nate yawns. “All the best detectives get flowers, s‘like a way of saying thank you.”

Jenny had never given flowers. Or been given flowers. She wore her hair buzzed short, laughed like machinegun fire, she’d been more likely to give Nick- old, human Nick- a shotgun blast to the face than a dozen red roses. Who’d have given him a shot or three, if he’d tried to give her any.

He turns the flower in his hands, over and over. Nate’s hair is too long again, they spend too much time away from Diamond City for him to keep it in any style at all, and he has two laughs, the soft, deep one Nate can hear now, echoing from deep inside his chest, and the other one. The one that belongs to another Nate entirely. The one that cuts through the air like an early warning siren, as the first bombs fall.

But that Nate isn’t here, this one is. Nick loves them both.

“Wanna have sex?” Nate yawns. He throws his legs over Nick’s, drags up the edge of his shirt with one hand and spreads a hand over where the false skin is fraying against his metal ribs. The heat of him has sunk so far into Nick that the touch only makes him shiver as Nate finds another cluster of wires, and Nick’s eyes slide half closed with the sheer warm contented pleasure of it.

“That’s up to you, sweetheart.” Another kiss. “Whatever you want.”

Nate hums and presses his crotch against Nate’s thigh and, well, that’s a pretty clear answer. The hand on his back splays flat, rubs little circles around that sensitive spots where lose wires and sensors are clustered and soldered together and god, oh god that feels good. There is no human equivalent Nick can reach for, nothing like orgasm or the sexual build up he’s happy to reach down and give Nate a hand with. It’s like- sinking under a deep sea of warm, sweet comfort, surrounded and safe and it would feel wonderful whoever was doing, like the most absurd trust exercise in vulnerability except, it’s Nate, and Nick would hold himself open to the waist and let Nate root around in him for spare parts if he wanted.

Nate’s cock is hard against his thigh, Nate shudders when Nick wraps his good hand around it, tuns his face up hungrily for a panting kiss.

And they stay, like that. Just like that. And it must look utterly absurd to anyone- the very idea is absurd, a half wrecked synth and a human with half his marbles gone on a filthy bed in a nuclear wasteland. But then, what isn’t strange and bizarre here? Nate rolls his head back and groans happily into Nick’s side, sliding back down until the two of them are curled up on the bed, Nate shivering and breathing deep and heavy, both hands on Nick’s back, roaming hungrily and mapping out new pathways of wires and sensors and bleeding out warm pleasure.

Nate comes with a low, languid shudder, over Nick’s leg and hand and his own stomach. His hands still for a moment, and Nick moves them away carefully. It’s enough, it’s more than enough, he can close his eyes and drift for most of the evening, like flying, or being deep underwater.

“Love you,” Nate mumbles, slurred.

“Yeah.” It doesn’t feel quite right, to say it back so much. Nate hands out declarations like he does flowers, like kisses, and it works for him. Nick- Nick doesn’t quite work like that, maybe if he says the words too much, they’ll wear out and break like everything else has around them.

But Nate just nods, like he knows what Nick is thinking. He reaches down and grabs the rag from Nick’s bucket and cleans the both off, mumbling what might be an apology and might be something more intimate, but it’s doesn’t matter. It’s good. One thing in this broken, impossible world, is good.


	2. Running Ever Faster from Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate has A Bad Day. Nick deals with this. Preston does not want to deal with this. Mama Murphy thought Sanctuary would be a quiet town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set in the first Act.

It’s not quite sleep.

Nick needs at least some time in every twenty four hours to run diagnostics, scan his hardware for faults and even check himself over for any malware. It’s a bit of time to shut down, forget the rest of the world and- okay, maybe it is rather like sleep. But even in the post-world world, everyone needs sleep. Everything and everyone from ghouls to radroaches sleep. Maybe synths do too.

He closes his eyes to Nate heading off to the workbench, a kiss still warm on his lips, the warm glint of Nate's eyes, a promise for later. He sets up the first run of diagnostics and-

Is it dreaming? Nick is never entirely sure. His memories from before are uncertain and wavering even for waking moments, he can’t remember what is was like to have dreams. Cannot be sure if the brief flashes, concepts, memories pieced together and falling away, can be called dreaming.

But he __is__  asleep. Which is why waking comes as such a sudden shock.

“Detective!” The shout jolts through him like electricity. Nick’s eyes snap open and his mind reels, trying to digest the flood of data after the quiet of his own systems.

Preston is hunched down next to him. The lights are burning down but outside the sky is just beginning to clear to gray, he can see the tight lines of Garvey’s face, the hard line of his mouth.

Nick sits up quickly, Nate isn’t here. He strains to hear for gunshots or the loose rattle of the makeshift turrets- but the only sound from outside is shouting. The voices are suddenly cut off by a loud crash and Nick is up in a moment. “What happened?”

“He- he just started off helping with the defenses.” Preston gets up, follows Nick to the door with a look of relief. “Then he just- lost it and now look.”

Nick looks out and oh hell Nate, what are you doing?

Most of Sanctuary is out, forming a sort of wary circle around Nate. The house just over the road from them is now completely torn down, pieces of roofing material and walls strewn across the road. Most of the floor has been ripped up and stacked to the side, with only the square foot covered by Mama Murphy’s chair spared. She’s sitting on it now, feet drawn up, hugging her knees in terror as Nate continues to methodically dismantle the doorframe she’s sitting under.

“Can you do something?” Preston looks at him. “We tried but it’s like he’s not hearing anything. He’s been at it all night.”

“Just tearing up the house?” Nick pulls his hat down, the too-early morning air is sharp and cold.

“And making that thing.” Preston points.

Nick looks. Nate is just dragging a few smashed clocks and radios over to it. It’s- well, Nick is struggling to call it a house. More like a huge metal bunker. Nate drops the clocks, hauls up a few lengths of sheet metal he must have scavenged from the remains of the house, and starts riveting them together to form a doorway. 

Preston looks pleadingly at Nick, he really doesn’t want to deal with this. Nick sighs, and walks over slowly. Nate doesn’t look up, face drawn and tight as he forms the last few parts of this strange project.

Nick waits until Nate’s put down the rivet gun, and turned to the radios. “Nate.”

No answer. Nate picks up a radio, opens the back, and starts picking out the little transistors. “Nate,” Nick repeats, crouches down beside him.

Nothing. Nate’s eyes are bright, feverish under the heavy shadows of the last few days. His dark skin is faintly dotted with sweat. His mouth moves, silently mouthing words Nick can’t make out.

He saw Nate this bad just once before. They’d been scavving around an old hospital and had come across an old set of power armor. Nate had been pulling out the fusion cores from the thing when it had suddenly activated and engulfed him.

It had taken Nick ten minutes to get Nate to hit the release catch, and it had been a relief when he’d finally started screaming. He’d more or less pulled himself together after that but he’d looked- bad. Like this bad.

Nick sighs, gets up. “Don’t think there’s much we can do. Just make sure he doesn’t go near anything with bullets in it.”

Nate doesn’t respond, continues putting together the basics for a generator. Nick sits down next to him, passes him parts as he works. Nate doesn’t even look up, doesn’t seem to notice Nick is even there. His hands dance through the motions, from one part to another, clipping components from clocks, old batteries, even a car’s stereo system, into something that starts to hum and tremble under his hands like a happy cat.

Nate blinks, for a moment Nick wonders if he’s finally gonna snap out of it, but then he- goes away again. Into the past in a way that makes the Memory Den seem healthy in comparison. Nate gets up and marches back to the wreckage of the house. There isn’t much left of it, but Nick takes a look around as Nate hunts down light fittings. There’s the remains of a child’s cot, broken down to slats and stacked away with the rest of the wood.

“Hell Nate.” Nick breathes. Nate just turns back to his metal barrack, arms full of bulbs and wires.

The bulbs are strung up pretty quickly, but Nate seems to be having some problems with the wires. Which makes perfect sense, since it’s about four in the morning and drizzling, and Nate is almost dropping from exhaustion. He's got the wires connected to the generator, and is trying to wire them into the conductor, but they keep getting snagged on branches or catching on parts of the bunker and shorting out.

Nate snarls, wordless, yanks at the wires. They spit blue and- okay, enough. Nick comes up quickly as Nate starts in pain. He growls something again, face closing up in pain and frustration, and pulls harder.

“Put the wires down.” Nick puts a hand on Nate’s shoulder.

Nate ignores him, his mouth moves, half heard breath- __“can do it__.”

“Nate, you’re hurting yourself.” Nick gets his good hand around Nate’s wrist, at least that one’s got good insulation. “Let them go before you fry.”

“ _ _I can do it!__ ” Nate roars suddenly, high and wild and so shocking Nick actually lets go and starts back a step. “I can do it! I did it before! I can do it! I did it before!” He pulls hard on the wires, they snap, short out, and the sparks catch on the edge of his sleeve.

Well, crap. “You can do it tomorrow.” Nick grabs Nate’s arms and this time, he’s not gonna let go. “You’re gonna set yourself on fire. __Stop!__ ”

That seems to get through. Nate stops, his hands fall, nerveless in Nicks', he stares off, into the solid wall of the bunker, into something only he can see. His mouth moves. __I did it before__.

“You’re going to do it tomorrow.” Nick reaches down to Nate’s hands, forces them opens. He nods at Preston and the man starts forward to shut off the generator. “You’ll do an amazing job. You always do.”

Nate nods, distant, vacant. His mouth trembles. “I can’t _ _.”__ A tiny, broken sound.

“Sure you can.” Nick takes Nate’s arm and starts leading him away from the bunker. “You’ll do it tomorrow, just like I said. But you’re hurt now and tired, so how abouts we get you to bed?”

Nate blinks, looks at the wreckage of his old house. Blinks again and the fog behind his eyes starts to clear a little. “Nick?”

“Right here.” He maneuvers Nate into the house.

“I used to be able to do it.”

“I bet you did.” He gently pushes Nate down on the bed. “Bet you used to make everyone jealous.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, Nate’s face contorts, but he’s too tired to cry. “Go to sleep.” Nick tries again, pushing him down with a hand to his forehead “Your-” he looks out at the hulking black metal thing, tries to think of a word to describe it- “little project’s still gonna be there later.”

Nate nods, vaguely, by the time Nick takes his hand away from his eyes, he’s asleep.

 

* * *

 

 

“Nick?”

Nick jerks awake. It’s not quite sleep, no one could sleep in that chair, but Nate is awake, blinking. “Hey there,” he smiles, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I- ow!” Nate yelps, snatching his hand back from where he’d been reaching for Nick’s. “What the-” He looks at his hands. They’re red-raw, with dark black scorch marks from where the wires had burned white hot.

“Yeah, about that.” Nick pulls out a stimpack, Nate nods, holds out his arm. “You remember anything about last night?”

The needle goes in, the plunger goes down, the mottled skin on Nate’s hands starts to heal. “I-’ Nate frowns. ‘I went to the workbench and-” he stops. “Oh fuck.”

“Yeah.” Nick shrugs. ‘Think you scared Mama Murphy pretty bad.”

“Shit.” Nate covers his face with his hands. “What did I do?”

“Just pulled her house down around her.” Nick nods out of the window. “Seems like you really wanted that place gone.”

Nate barely follows his glance, then coils up on himself, one arm crossed over his face and drooping. “Sorry.” It comes half muffled from the cage of limbs.

“I’m not the one you need to say sorry to.” Mama Murphy is still out there, clinging desperately to her chair in case Nate is going to come back for that too. “I just got to watch you nearly turn into a human lightning rod about three times.”

Nate freezes to the bed, suddenly very, very still. “I-” He looks up, and there’s something of last night in his eyes, something hot, and wild and terrified and Nick feels sick to his silicon guts to see it. “I didn’t finish up, did I?”

“Hey- no.” But Nate already is up, stumbling out with still-healing hands and shaky limbs out to the generator. Nick only just manages to get there before him, stands over the on switch and glowers at Nate until he just fastens the wires and meekly shuffles away to link up the lights properly.

“Okay.” He says at last. Nick nods, and pulls the switch. The generator cranks on, humming happily, and golden lights flare in Nate’s monstrosity of a bunker.

It looks amazing, even in the midafternoon light. Sturges and Preston come to have a look, and they are smiling. The first building in Sanctuary to have power. Nate is just staring at it, something lost in his eyes. Nick takes his arm, maybe a bit too tight. “Hey there. You with me?”

Nate nods, after a long moment. “Okay.” He repeats, slowly.

“That was pretty good.” Nick continues.

“I couldn’t do it.” Nate murmurs, a distant refrain.

“You were wiped out and it was raining.” Nick says firmly, tightens his grip a bit more. Come on, stay here.

“Before.” Nate’s eyes are gone. “They laughed. I couldn’t do it. I-” he looks down at his hands. “I did it before.”

“And you just did it again.” Come on, damn you, stay __here.__

And Nate nods, finally. “Yeah.” He blinks, and __yes yes finally__  his eyes are here, now. “Pity none of them are here to see it.” He tries to smile and it just sort of slides off in the worst way. “Guess they’ll have let me back into CIT now.”

“Guess you’ll have to make Mama Murphy a new house.” Nick bats back, “Have you seen what you did to her old one? She’ll never get over it.”

Mama Murphy is scowling at them, Nate meets her laser glare and blinks- “Oh.” Back all the way and pinned to the present. Maybe Nick should cart Mama Murphy along with them from now on, for when Nate needs to be __here__ and __now__. “Shit, sorry.”

“Go on.” He gives Nate a nudge. “I’ll give a hand.”

“Sorry,” Nate repeats sheepishly as they walk over the ruins of the old house. “We’re gonna make you a new house Mama, right now. I’m so sorry.”

“I learned my lesson.” Mama Murphy’s hands are so tight on the chair Nick wonders if they’re going to leave nailmarks. “I’m staying right out here. If houses can just fly away around you, you might as well sleep in the open air.” She hunches in her chair, and glowers at the pair of them. Nick manages not to laugh.

“You heard the lady, Nate.”

“Okay?” Nate wavers. “I’ll- make a house right behind you? In case it rains?”

Mama Murphy just glares, so Nate sighs and they draw up a plan for a decent sort of wasteland house, tough and waterproof, to fit in the half-house, half-yard area behind her.


	3. Beautiful Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick is feeling dispirited after the conclusion of the Nakono case. Nate does his best to cheer him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Far Harbor came early in my game, during Act One.

Nick goes far enough down from Arcadia that the first tendrils of fog are starting to coil around the trees. It’s far enough. He slows, leans against a tree and sighs. Goddamn it, he hates when cases go bad. It’s not as bad as it could be, of course, Kasumi is alive and reasonably safe, but the thought of the looks on her parents’ faces is enough to rate this case at least three-quarters of a failure.

He pulls out a cigarette, the pack is still damp from Nate’s sudden desire to go fishing for Mirelurk queens, but he finds one that seems reasonably okay. Snaps open the lighter and lights up. It helps. Not the chemicals, of course. He isn’t sure nicotine even lasts two hundred years, but it tastes more or less the same to his sensors, and the act is reassuringly normal. He can stand here, and it’s just- another case. Not a great ending. Nick’s had plenty of those. Other Nick even more.

But Other Nick hadn’t needed the justification. He hadn’t had the little voice, buzzing in his servers, __if you can’t do this, then what are you__ ** _ ** _for_**_** _ _?__

Nick blows out a stream of smoke, it hangs in the air, a silent proclamation that he is __here__. He exists, he has a point and a purpose, even if this last one hasn’t worked out too well.

__What possible good in having one more broken down synth around, if you can’t even do anything to help anyone__?

He closes his eyes to shut out the memory of DiMA’s knowing eyes. His hungry hands, grasping Arcadia, sheltering it and clinging to it at the same time. This is DiMA’s point. This is his purpose. What has Nick got to counter that?

“Nick?”

Well, he’s got Nate. That counts for something.

Nate wavers in between the trees, blinking. He’s left the armor off, a matt black outline half lost in the fog, with only his eyes catching the faint, diffuse moonlight. “Is that you?”

“Yeah.” Nick pushes himself off the tree. “Everything okay up there?”

“Oh yeah,” closer, Nick can see Nate is smiling, that slow, dreamlike uptick of his lips. “You just looked- I wasn’t sure if you were there.” He slows in front of Nick, waves a hand through the fog. “You looked like a ghost.”

“Synths and fog spirits, and Mirelurk queens.” Nick smiles. “Why not ghosts too?”

Nate nods. He’s swaying softly, as though he’s about to pull Nick into a dance. It wouldn’t surprise Nick. Nate hasn’t been the same since he took Atom’s initiation. He’d be worried, but he likes this new calm, thoughtful Nate after the increasingly desperate, brittle man who’d followed him to Far Harbor, as much to run away from the rest of the world as to help the Nakonos.

He thinks Nate might like himself like this too. He certainly isn’t complaining. The brand on his cheek is still raw and red angry, but he’s still smiling that sleepy, delirious smile.

“A beautiful ghost.” Nate continues, leans towards Nick. “Like you’d be gone the moment I tried to touch you.”

“Hey.” Nick breathes, his voice too low, lost in the fog. “I’m here.”

“Can barely see you.” Nate steps closer. “A beautiful dark ghost,” he repeats, catching Nick’s hand in both of his. “Can I hold you?”

“If that’s your Children of Atom pick up lines, they need work.” Nick lets Nate pull him closer. He takes a last drag on the cigarette and tosses it away to the damp ground. “You sound like you’ve had one too many.”

“Hmm.” Nate buries his face in Nick’s shoulder, embraces him. “Don’t need alcohol.”

“Religion’s a hell of a drug.” Nick closes his eyes, relaxes into Nate’s warm arms.

“It makes a fuckton of things better.” Nate mumbles against him, the vibrations run up Nick’s spine and nest in the back of his brain, he shivers. “It makes them right, and good, and make sense.”

Nick could say something to that, but he’s talking to a guy who hadn’t been playing with a full deck even before he’d been turned into an icicle for two hundred years, then tossed into a radioactive wasteland. If Atom makes things so much better, then Nick can learn to keep his smart mouth shut. “Okay.”

And- well, Nick doesn’t believe in Atom, but he believes in Nate. And right now? Standing here and holding him? Nate is making a fuckton of things better for Nick. He’s only wearing his undershirt and pants and Nick’s hands wander over a ribcage, spine and hipbones maybe a little less prominent than they were a week ago. Nate’s breath rushes hot over Nick’s neck, catches on the exposed struts in his throat and bleeds hot, vital heat into Nick’s chest.

“I fought beautiful ghosts once.” Nate says, dreamlike. He sounds half asleep. “Can’t remember where. Before.” Nick nods, he knows __before.__  “Dancing shadows in the trees, there and-” he traces a burning line down Nick’s neck with a finger. “Gone. Couldn’t hold them. Not sure if I killed them. Can’t remember.”

“Should I be worried?” Nate’s hair is speckled with fog-dew. It wets Nick’s lips when he kisses him.

“Nah.” Nate shrugs narrow shoulders. “Wouldn’t kill them now. Kiss them maybe.” He lifts his head up, gives Nick a lopsided grin. “Hope they were okay, probably not, but- yeah.” Another shrug. “Stupid war.”

Nick strokes Nate’s hair, his back, his upper arms. His skin is damp and prickled up in gooseflesh. “What are you doing out here to begin with?”

“Looking for you.” Nate raises his eyebrows. “Why’d you go out?”

“Just needed some air.” He glances back at Arcadia, suddenly badly wants a cigarette. His finger itch for the pack. He leans forwards and kisses Nate instead.

Nate hums happily. Blinks when Nick pulls away. “We can’t make her come back with us, you know.”

“Yeah.” Nick shrugs, pulls away and digs out his pack after all. “Doesn’t matter if she’s a synth or not, she’s made up her mind.” Nate has the lighter out, Nick leans in and lets him light it. “Not looking forward to breaking that to the Nakanos.” He walks over to a rock outcropping hanging above the path far below, and sits down.

“I can do it,” Nate offers, sits down next to Nick. “If you’d rather-”

Nick shakes his head. There’s a cold night wind picking up, and the mist around them is thinning. Below their feet, Far Harbor is a bank of cloud that makes Nick think- a brief flash there and gone again- of Old Nick, flying out from Chicago.

Nate rests against his shoulder, humming something Nick vaguely remembers hearing in the Nucleus. “You did good.” He murmurs finally. “Really good. I mean, you tracked her over land and sea and a hella lot of a fog. How many other detectives can say that?”

“Not sure there’s that many other detectives.” Nick can’t help a smile.

“See?” Nate’s eyes burn faint amber in the moonlight, the glint from Nick’s cigarette. “They should be glad you’re doing such a great job.”

Nick doesn’t answer, draws on the cigarette as an excuse. Fact was, even Other Nick didn’t always get such great shakes from clients. He could try and reason that they were just upset, but- well, Nate hadn’t been the only one hassled back then for what he was, the faint color of his skin, the shape of his eyes. Other Nick's grandfather might have changed their name but some things clung for a long time.

“Bet you got a better track record than before.” That word again, __before.__ A little private code, between them. “You’ve had so much more practice.”

“You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” Nick crushes the first flickers of perverse pride Nate’s words stoke up. It feels- __obscene__  to try and compare them. Him, Other Nick.

“No,” Nate agrees. “I’m loony, everyone says so- well, everyone but the Children, but I guess they don’t count.” He turns his head, still resting on Nick’s shoulder. “It’s still true though. Run the numbers, number of cases failed, before and then.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Nick tries not to roll his eyes but it’s hard. Civilians. Well, Nate is ex military but that’s a handful of shot up memories even he can’t make head or tails of, so that doesn’t count. “Would ya call this one a success?”

Nate considers it. “Yeah, I guess. Kasumi’s okay, probably safer than back in the Commonwealth. I mean, she was going to head out eventually, and the nearest things to her parent’s lot are Saragus Ironworks or that fucking Dunwich place.”

Nick manages not to wince. “I’ll give you that one.” He’s not sure how much he believes Nate about Dunwich. He’s not sure how much __Nate__  believes Nate about Dunwich. Enough to be fairly certain no one should ever go there ever. In comparison, Arcadia is Vault 81.

“What about Vault 114?” Nick continues, runs his fingers through Nate’s hair. Nate purrs and relaxes against him, his loose, warm body molding easily against Nick’s rougher, raddled one. “Technically, that’s a success. Found the girl, at least.”

“Found you.” Nate looks at him, that wide, silly, daft grin. “Absolute success. One hundred fucking percent.”

Looking at him, that smile, those dazzling eyes- Nick can’t argue with that. Nate, Nate busting into Vault 114 all those weeks back, wild and armed and wearing that absurd Silver Shroud coat. Rushing into Nick’s orbit like a rogue star and dragging him along for the ride. It’s been pretty amazing this far.

He presses the fingers of his metal hand into Nate’s ragged hair, scratches lightly against his scalp. “Yeah, okay. Two successes.”

“And the Earl Sterling Case, and that fun with the gilded grasshopper.” Nate continues, “And that’s just with me. ‘Diamond City’s most effective detective’, on Diamond City Radio.”

“The only detective.”

“And you’d be still fixing sheds if you weren’t any good.”

Nick closes his eyes. Nate is right. He is good. He. That’s the question, isn’t it. Is it him? Is it him or is it Other Nick? Where is he, in the mess of memories before and after, overlaying each other like a palimpsest overwritten to many times?

Nate huddles further in, Nick pulls his coat open and Nate presses up tight against his body. Chin up in the crook of Nick’s neck, legs pressed up and dangling with Nick’s over the edge of the precipice. Here. He is here. This, with Nate. This is for him, this is absolutely and unquestionably who he is. He tightens his hand a little, possessive. Nate hums happily.

He strokes Nate's back as the fog closes around them. Just fog for now, the rads are further down. It coils and muffles the world, turning in it into a greyscale landscape sketch, a faded photograph.

And the two of them, outlined then lost. He kisses Nate’s hair. Beautiful ghosts. Lost between the past and the future. Here. Now.


	4. Years to Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate joins in a holiday, and remembers another.

The stars hang like icicles. Nate cranes his head up, tries to map them. There’s a brief flash in his mind- a globe of constellations- then it’s gone. His breath fogs in the thin, brittle air and he claps his hands together, rubbing heat back into his worn, patched gloves.

The snow is patchy, faintly radioactive enough to tick Nate’s giger counter, but the real fear is the __crump crump crump__  of their boots through the thin crust of frost. Every sound makes the ice in Nate’s spine lock up, too much, too __loud__.

He’s stopped, legs unwilling to move. The buildings are high, grey and snowflogged. Nothing is moving. Not even the ever-present gunfire. Nate’s ears ache with cold and silence.

Nick stops, turns. He’s got an ancient grey scarf around his throat to patch the gaping hole and keep the heat in. He pauses, turns, and take’s Nate’s arm, “Bit colder than you’re used to?”

Yes. No. It didn’t used to be this cold, but the memories are gone when Nate reaches for them, just a sort of wavering uncertainty that this isn’t normal. He shrugs.

“No one’s out.” Nick shifts his pack, his gun. “We’re the only fools stupid enough not to hunker down for winter.”

As if waiting for the chance to prove him wrong, the night shatters into a high, terrible scream.

Nate is down almost before it starts. His brain might be crap at memory but it’s first rate at putting things together and it knows that sound. The roar of iron and explosives of a missile.

But instead of the punch of concussion and sick blast of heat from a near-miss- or the momentary flicker of pain and ensuing void of a direct hit- the missile goes off in mid-air, high above the streets of old Boston. It’s a bright yellow-gold bloom, a splash of brilliant colour in the monochrome night that completely blows Nate’s nightvision.

He rolls over, grappling for his gun and up again, not even feeling the cold of his soaked clothes. He finds the butt of the machine, rolls it easily into his hands. The trigger, the barrel. Here. Good.

A blink, and Nate opens his eyes to a world of mathematics and angles. The missile explosion already fading into trailing embers, he tracks the fine trail of half frozen smoke back down. “Diamond city.”

The ringing in his ears fades enough and he can hear the gunshots. Missile launcher. Pipe rifles. Maybe a couples of grenades if the acoustics aren’t lying. He crouches, stalks forwards a few meters. Raiders are out, no one would be mad enough to attack in this. Super mutants? A few meters more and- where are the turrets? They should should be sounding off by now. Nate pauses, stops, glances back to Nick.

Nick is frowning. He lowers his gun and stands up slowly, looks up at the moon, just rising above the jagged wrecks of buildings. “Well, I’ll be- it’s that already.” He shoulders his gun, and picks out a cigarette.

Nate looks at him, back at the crackling rattle of explosions. “What is it?”

Nick tries to light his cigarette, the flip lighter sparks, but doesn’t light. Nate sighs and gets up, slides his gun back and digs in his pack for his little collection of lighters. “Here.”

Nick doesn’t take it, so Nate flicks it open and lets him lean in to light up. Nick’s eyes gleam, amused in the flamelight, Nate just smiles back, like he’s gonna complain about having Nick a bit closer than usual. “Thanks, doll.”

“What’s all that about?” Another scream of a rocket, it hits a building a few streets away, Nate can see broken glass stream out like snowflakes.

“New year.” Nick breaths out a stream of coiling blue smoke. He points up. “First full moon. Guess they gave up trying to make fireworks after what happened last year.”

Nate looks up, and breathes out the tension in a long, billowing sigh. No threat. “New year?”

“Sure. Think Doctor Sun’s family started it way back. They didn’t let the old clampdown stop the party, sure as hell weren’t gonna stop because of the bombs.”

Nate looks up at the rockets. Fireworks. Chinese New Year. For a moment, his mind is flooded with flashes, red and gold, the crackle of firecrackers. He reaches for it and- it’s gone. Like a dream, like the smoke from Nick’s cigarette.

“You ever seen one before?” Nick smiles, takes Nate’s arm gently. His metal hand is wrapped in layers and layers of rags, and it still feels like ice underneath. Nate covers it with his own hand, lets his heat soak through.

“I think so,” Nate shrugs. He reaches up with his free hand, mimes grabbing thin air. Opens his hand and looks at his empty palm. “Not much.”

“Must have been pretty young.” Nick continues, easily. “You were- what? Eight when the clampdown came in?”

Nate opens his mouth to answer, and the cold rushes in. The cold. The clenched fist inside his head like brainfreeze only worse. His stomach turns to water, his legs shake and he misses a step, stumbles, Nick steadies him. He doesn’t fall. He’s standing. He’s okay. Here. He’s okay. Here.

Now.

Nate opens his eyes, takes a breath. The night. The cold, the distant, celebratory gunfire. The warm glow of Nick’s eyes. Home.

“Okay?” Nick says softly.

“Okay.”

“Come on then,” Nick smiles , pulls at his arm, Nate steps forward, once, twice. He’s okay. He’ll get the strength back in his legs in a bit. “This is worth seeing.”

Diamond City is ablaze. All the lights are on and many of them have been covered in red shades. A huge monster of junk and leather suddenly rears up in front of them and Nate takes a step back, startled. Its cola-bottle eyes roll, mouth flapping open and closed. The drums are half inaudible under the gunfire, but Doctor Sun is doing his best, beating out a rhythm as the lion dance wanders down through Diamond City.

Myrna is tying a bundle of hubflowers to the tincans above her shop. There’s a cheer as the lion rears up- is that Mrs Li under that?- and bites down the hubflowers, shaking and spraying them everywhere to a roar from the crowd. A few of the thick petals bounce off Nate’s shoulders and he reaches out and- and-

The faint smell of raw cabbage, the green leaves spread across the ground.

Nate shivers. Nick’s grip on his arm suddenly the only solid point in a world struggling to slide away under his feet. He pulls his gloves off, takes off his hat. The cold helps. He drives his nails into his palms. Okay. Okay.

Roaring, drums, laughter. The lion moves on. Arturo and the Bobrovs are bringing up the rear with machineguns pointed up. They’ve painted them red and gold for the occasion. The guns help, and Nate finds his mind hanging on the the short breaks between the shots. The tiny breaths between bullets. Not automatic, his mind trembles. Just semi. Not automatic. Nick pulls him away, slowly, step by step back to the watching crowd around Takahashi’s. The seats are all taken but Nate hauls himself up to sit on the counter. Nick leans against it, takes out another cigarette. Looks up at Nate.

“You can have the lighter.” Nate tries half-heartedly, but it feels good to see Nick leaning down to light up, so easy, close to him. Sensual usually, an excuse for Nate to lean down the last few inches and press his lips to Nick’s, but right now it’s just familiar and sweet and Nate closes his eyes for a moment, takes a breath that smells of cordite and bashed hubflower.

And tato.

Nate opens his eyes and it’s Nat. She’s smiling, in brown-red clothes, and hold out a Tato. “Everyone gets one.”

It’s red. Nate’s eyes are dragged to it. It’s redder than anything else here, despite the best attempts of Diamond City’s Chinese families. Everything else is brown, russet, copper, pinkish dirt, but not red.

Not this red.

Nate’s bones tremble. This is bad. There isn’t any getting out of it this is __bad.__ The light gleams on the tato’s glossy skin and suddenly it isn’t a tato at all. Nate manages not to see what it is but oh Atom oh blessed Atom it’s close and Nate doesn’t want to see-

He takes the tato. That helps a bit. It’s a tato. Not- something else. Just a tato. He looks at it. Might be worth it for the seeds, come summer. A field somewhere, a farm needing a new crop-

He’s getting it under control, rooting himself back __here__ , when Nick comes it, gently. “Hey, you gonna eat that?”

The knot is back in Nate’s stomach, his mind. He’s not sure he could even __swallow__. “Not really.”

“Come on,” Nat is still smiling. “You have to.”

 _ _You have to__.

“It’s tradition.”

 _ _It’s orders__.

“Stop.” Nate whispers.

She elbows him in the ribs playfully. Nate starts, nearly falling off the counter. “Wow,” she rubs her elbow. “You really need one. Are those your ribs?”

“No.” They’re someone elses. He can see them, in the street. The head’s somewhere near the top of the street, he’s not sure where the legs are. The ribcage is gaping open in front of him.

“Nate.” A voice comes from very, very far away. “Nate.”

 _ _Fire,__ _ _Brooks__.

 _ _That’s an order, soldier__.

The fireworks. They must have saved up their gasoline rations for the fireworks. The hangings patched together from old clothes and curtains and who knows what else they’d smuggled into the detainment camp.

__Enemy aliens_ _

__It’s showing support to the enemy__.

The drums, on tin cans, kettles, pots and pans.

The cabbages, pieced together leaf by leaf, hanging from the low, rotting doorways.

Nate looks down. His hands are huge, iron, heavy. The power armor is too small, he cannot breathe. He’s holding a gun. A minigun. Its muzzle is glowing. Glowing so red.

__You’ll get a medal for this soldier._ _

Nate screams. He throws himself off the counter and hits the ground, clawing for his gunstrap. It catches on his pack and he pulls and pulls and pulls screaming __get it off get it off get it off__ -

It comes free and he hurls the gun away from him. Tries to get up to run and just falls over. Catches his boots in his clothes and rolls, crashing into people’s legs. The world is incoherent mud and screaming and __he’s__ screaming and oh god make it stop __make it stop__ -

Nate isn’t sure how long it is before it does. There’s a sort of blank white wall in his memory which is probably good because he’s made one hell of a fool of himself. Everything hurts. His body’s one big bruise and his hands and knees are raw. He’s ripped another good inch from the bottom of his coat and he can taste blood from a split lip.

Nate opens his eyes. He’s in a ditch near the farms, lying in about two inches of filthy snow and freezing water. He can hear the gunshots and cheering some way off, but he can’t quite tune into it, like his head’s a radio that’s take one too many hard knocks.

“Nate? You back with me?”

Nate looks up, Nick is sitting on the edge of the ditch. “You’re missing the show.” Nate manages. His voice is raw from screaming.

“You put on a hell of a show yourself.” Nick slides down, gets Nate by the shoulders. “Next time we’ll put you in the display. One man lion dance.”

Nate chokes out a weak laugh. Gets his legs under him as Nick pulls him upright. “Shit, I’m sorry-”

“No.” Nick’s cloth-wrapped hand covers Nate’s mouth. “Shush.” He looks at Nate, long and hard until Nate closes his mouth and nods. Nick pulls his hand away, Nate doesn’t say anything. “Good.” Nick nods. “You put on a hell of a show.” His voice soft, steady, as though laying it down in law. “It’s not a proper Lunar New Year unless Mad Nate throws a fit.” His eyes are soft, bright gold coins and infinitely more precious. “That’s how you know it’s a good New Year.”

Nate closes his eyes. “Thank you.” He breathes.

Nick leans, in, kisses him, soft and light as breathing. His lips taste of nicotine and warm plastic and machine oil. Nate leans in, prolongs the kiss. Here. Oh Atom thank you here. He’s here and now and thank you thank you thank you oh Atom praise to you and this insane, wonderful world you made.

“Let’s get you inside.” Nick throws an arm over his shoulder. “Ellie’s got a bunch of bloodleaves over the door, you’ll be okay? We can take them down if you’re not.”

Nate shakes his head. “I’m okay.” He tries to smile, it comes out a bit sideways. “’s good luck, right?”

Nick slides a hand down his back. “I had Nat take your stuff back to the office, we can tuck it away if you’re not comfortable.”

Nate shudders, nods a bit too fast. He’s not sure he can face his gun. It feels unfair. It’s not even __that__  gun. He hasn’t touched a minigun since before the bombs. He __likes__  his gun, it’s sweet and fast and perfect and never hits anything but what he wants. He feels bad for abandoning it like this but he just __can’t__  look at it right now. Even the gunfire from the parade makes him flinch.

Nick is looking at him, calm, concerned, wonderful. Nate relaxes against him. “You okay?” He gets a quick, lovely squeeze.

Nate opens his mouth for __I’m okay__ , then revises it. “I’ll be okay.” He tries instead.

Nick nods.


	5. Tryptych

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Dangerous Minds, Nate and Nick come to terms with what they have and have not seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... whaddya mean it wasn't a three way Drift?
> 
> Skull Bearer has written too much pacific rim fic.

Doctor Amari had suggested they combine their minds to overcome Kellogg’s, but when Nick opens his eyes, he knows the truth. It was a distraction. _He_ had been a distraction. His had been the mind opened up to Kellogg, a sacrificial offering offered up, and his systems are still struggling to cope with the sheer scale of corrupted drives and bad programming. Kellogg, it seems, was the vengeful sort.

Nate is still inside, with is good because Nick- Nick really isn’t sure what to say to him right now. It’s not that he’s angry- Nate hardly know what was going to happen, and Nick’s had worse anyway, but-

Well.

It was the three of them. Nick, Nate and Kellogg coiled together like some sick triple snake, endlessly devouring each other. Nate dug into Kellogg, Kellogg dug into Nick, and Nick- Nick, found himself in _Nate’s_ head.

It’s like- having a thunderstorm inside his drives, even now. The vast majority is just black, blotting cloud, like someone’s spilled ink all over Nate’s memory, with the odd, brief lightning-flash of sudden recognition. They are sharp as knives. Shuddering, Nick closes his eyes, tries to push them back, but they leave bright shadows in his circuits.

“Nick?” Nate’s voice comes soft and hesitant, breaks uncertainly through his own thoughts.

And- he slips. Stuck between Nate’s nightmares, and Kellogg’s damage and his own never-certain systems, he reels, and Kellogg’s fragments push to the fore.

He manages to shove that part away quickly, but not before Kellogg gets a few words out, and when Nick gets back inside his own head, Nate is white and looks about to throw up.

_“Nick?”_ Nate’s voice has shot up to a shrill, terrified shriek.

“Sorry, sorry.” Nick closes his eyes. “Just- wait.” He scans his drives, and finally settles on a partial reboot. Not complete, but enough to wipe out the worst of the damage. He can scour out the rest of the mnemonic impressions later.

He opens his eyes. Nate is on the floor. He’s slightly green-tinged now. “Okay,” Nick nods. He gets up, puts a hand on Nate’s neck, cutting down under his coat to rest against the bare skin of his neck. Nate shivers, but doesn’t move.

“Come up here.” Nick continues, and Nate manages to stumble up, leaning against him. “He’s gone. It’s just mnemonic memories, I’m fine.”

Nate doesn’t say anything, turns his face into Nick’s coat and just stays there, faintly shuddering for a few moments.

“If that was a joke,” Nate says finally. “That was a really, really shitty one.”

That’s the perfect cover, “Sorry.” Nick hugs him. “Detectives shouldn’t try for humor, it gets dark.”

Nate gives a weak chuckle. He straightens up at last, Nick pretends not to notice him wiping his eyes. “Shit, okay. Never do that again. That was about the worst moment of my life.”

It isn’t. Oh, maybe it is for Nate’s life in this century, but before that-

Well. Pick a moment. There are about a dozen Nick can choose even from the fragments he’d seen.

He rubs Nate’s shoulder, leads him gently to the door. Outside, the air is damp and raining. Nate closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, Nick feels his own drives start to whirr in relief, venting out bad, sick air out of his systems and for a moment Nick wonders if he can see the ghost of Kellogg, forced out of him into the rain and gone, washed into Boston’s half collapsed sewers.

“Oh fuck I need a drink.” Nate shakes his head. The rain beads in his hair, clings to the lines of his throat and jaw. His eyes are clearer now, breath coming more evenly.

“Did you find what you needed?” Nick sends out a second scan through his systems. Good, there’s a few glitches here and there, but most are minor now, back to normal in no time.

Nate frowns, “Didn’t you see in his head?”

There! Nick finds a knot of decaying memories, alien, a photonegative to his own. He resets them, and there’s a shuddering jolt in the back of his mind- then it settles, tension released. Which means he is only halfway paying attention when he says “No, I saw in yours.”

Nate stops. Nick stumbles. “Oh shit.” Nate looks, if anything, even _more_ horrified that when he’d thought Kellogg was in Nick’s head. “Oh _shit_. Nick, I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t.” Nick shakes his head, and tries to smile. It’s not easy. The memories are not mnemonic, but they are still there, hunched and huddled in his servers.

“I didn’t know,” Nate whispers. “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ever have-”

Nick shakes his head, and Nate shuts up. He lowers his head, stares down at the bloated gutters. Nick flexes his hands, wants to reach out and- and what? He can’t make the last five years of Nate’s life not have happened, and there isn’t anything he can say that can even come close.

Nate steps a bit closer, their shoulders bump. He doesn’t look up at Nick. “It’s bad enough in my head.” He says finally. “I- it’s not fair for you. It’s a mess in there.”

“I’m used to bad wiring.” Nick rubs his back, “You should see in here.”

Nate looks up and smiles weakly. “Yeah, well, no need to make it worse. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Neither did you.” Nick whispers. Nate’s back stiffens.

“Yeah.” Nate’s voice falls flat in the downpour. “No one did. It wasn’t just me.”

But it was you. Nick doesn’t say. It would have been dreadful to anyone, but to Nate, a man who lives in his mind, through his hands, the slow, poisonous death of the drugs were a horror nothing after the bombs could even come close. The gradual, creeping onset of Parkinson’s disease.

He wonders if that was where it started. Synths, the Institute, the old CIT designing drugs that could pull on people like puppets. That had snatched up an incredible, beautiful young man who had the misfortune of being too dark, too queer and just too _brilliant_ for the world then, and turned him into- into-

Into a man who would have followed any order, any command. Who had sleepwalked through life, winding down like an abandoned clock, until the tremors had gotten so bad he has been discharged.

Then the bombs, and the cryogenic process that had healed the damage but couldn’t bring back Nate’s memories, riddled and tattered like gunshots through silk, and gone.

Nate shivers against him, the bones jutting through his skin, through cloth and Nick wants to- he doesn’t know. Hold him, keep him close, things that are probably not a great idea in the middle of the night in Goodneighbour.

“How much did you see?” Nate’s voice is tiny, half lost in the rain.

“Nothing about the War.” Nick says, tries to keep his voice soft and low, easy. “Just before. CIT mostly.” There are memories of the war, but they are more blotchy than the others- the drugs, and Nate’s own efforts to wipe them out and forget. He doesn’t pry. He can see the blood from here.

Those from before are- bright. Old CIT. Lectures. The club. Nate in that dress and red heels, dancing. The raid. And- afterwards, at the police station and oh god no because he _knows_ that police station and he had walked past that cell so many times and he shoves down Nate’s memories because if he had walked out of the cell, gone up the stairs and turned right _there_ and left _there_ and opened _that_ office door-

He doesn’t have any of Other Nick’s memories concerning the Vice Squad, but that doesn’t mean anything. Like Nate, half his memories are missing.

It doesn’t mean anything at all.

“Surprised you want to hang around with an old detective after all that.” Nick continues, smoothly. “Hardly blame you if you wanted to find better company.”

Nate snorts, so that’s a success, at least. “You’re good.” He rests his head on Nick’s shoulder, closes his eyes and lets Nick guide them through the soaking streets. “You’re not like that.” He sighs. “No one’s like that. It’s all gone. Praise Atom.”

“Yeah,” Vice Squad. The words rattle in Nick’s servers. “I give you that one.” Vice Squad. Prostitutes, queers, druggies. That much is clear but when Nick pushes harder he can see more, half blotched and sepia as though coffee had run over the memories. Food hoarders, protesters, activists for the blacks, for the massacred and imprisoned Chinese. Forcibly forgotten. Things Other Nick hadn’t wanted recorded. The black otherside of life before the War. Other Nick had tried to forget it, Nate hadn’t have that chance.

It was gone. It was all gone. No one cared now. Nick leans forward easily and presses damp lips to Nate’s drenched hair and no one looks, no one cared.

“There was just something- _wrong_ with that place.” Nate continues, slowly, “Wrong all the way down. Like the Institute. You just couldn’t be- good, back then.”

Nick looks down sharply and Nate is looking back at him, sharp eyes half open. “You just couldn’t.” Nate continues, “Like walking through the Glowing Sea without a haz-suit. It clung to you. Changed you.”

“There were good people.” Nick tries, half hearted. _Vice Squad._

_“_ Sure, inside.” Nate straightens, Nick’s shoulder aches for the loss of him. “But they did horrible things. All of them.” He doesn’t blink, his eyes burn. “You couldn’t live like that, back then. You _couldn’t_.”

Nick drops his head, water runs heavy down the crown of his hat.

“People like us.” Nate takes his arm, squeezes it, fingers tight around the slats of his metal bones. “They killed us, one way or another. Or tuned us into one of them. Here- for all the mess-” Nate waves a hand, and shrugs. Turns his face up to the pouring rain. The neon catches on the water, outlines Nate’s face in red and green and blue as they pass the Third Rail.

“You’re not him.” Nate says finally “You couldn’t _be_ him. He couldn’t be you, even if he wanted to.”

Nick says nothing, the words wash away like the rain, soak into his coat. “Well then, you’re not that guy either.” He says finally. “They’re all gone.”

The words are meant for Nate not himself, but there is a kind of- weight that slips off, just by saying these words. Something he’d been carrying all his life that’s just gotten a little lighter. This is them. This is all there is. Just a man and an old synth, standing together in the rain and neon in the middle of a dead city. And right now, that’s enough. That’s more than enough.

“Come on,” he turns Nate around and pulls him down towards the Third Rail. “No one’s going anywhere in this, and I’m gonna need a couple of hours to dry off. Might as well see if Magnolia’s on.”

Nate hesitates, then nods, follows him inside and out of the rain. “We’re gonna need a break.” Nate says finally, “Going to the Glowing Sea next.”

“And you brought a hazmat suit?”

“Yeah.” Nate smiles, “We’re looking for someone else who’s trying to forget himself, so that should be easy for us.”

 

 


	6. Three Months of October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate, his first year in the Commonwealth, through the lens of his favourite book.

 

The man raised his head, two hours up, and he hadn’t even taken the pills yet, his body trembled around him, exhausted. He was a spot of stillness in the rushing mob, numbed calm in the screams.

“Run!” Her eyes burn, her mouth a red circle around the world. The boy is crying. The words run down the man’s spine to his legs, bypasses his slack, senseless brain. He runs up the hill.

She takes his arm, pulls him faster even as his legs tremble and cramp, he staggers, almost falls.

“Come on!”

The sun is bright, staining everything gold. The trees wave above them. A heartbeat.

The light, when it comes, is too much to bear. The man shuts his eyes and the skin of his eyelids turns white.

__The clocks stopped at 1.17__.

In the silence and dazzling glare inside his head, the memory is coughed up, fragmented, full of holes.

He opens his eyes to the cloud, a cathedral spire rising.

__A long shear of light and a series of low concussions._ _

The frail, skeleton of self looks up in benediction. His mouth twitches upwards, weak and drawn. It’s over. It’s finally, finally over.

He’s dreamed of this since he was seventeen.

__A dull rose glow on the windowpane._ _

The lift rattles down, the shockwave roaring just past his head. She’s staring at him in confusion. “Why are you smiling?”

She’s very still as they fall together, holding the boy. Her heart to his, those dark, alien eyes staring out of Nate like marbles out of chiffon.

__Each others’ world entire._ _

“I’m not.” Nathaniel Brooks smiles.

 

* * *

 

 

The light is the first good sign. Nate raises his hand to shield off the glare, blinks and blinks watery eyes until he squints through to the blue, blue sky above. His damp skin steams as the heat of the world hits, a baked in, ancient fire. He peers through his fingers and the sun is a blazing white star high above.

__The banished sun circles the Earth like a grieving mother with a lamp._ _

The birds come next, curious crows on the hanging slackwires from the pylons, and that __is__  a good sign. One of them arches its opalescent black wings and hops up, a flash  of dark against the brassy sky and gone.

__Th names of birds._ _

Nate steps out uncertainly. The world around him a blasted, desertlike.

__Ashen scabland. Cauterised terrain._ _

The ground crunches underfoot. Ants and lizards scurry for cover under the rusted hulk of vehicles, the sunken struts of a construction cabin. Nate’s body flows liquid around him, after the frozen juddering of the pills. He wanders aimlessly around, finds three rations of army rad-away in a petrified crate and it’s a moment’s work to touch them, pick them up. His mind trembles, threatens to snapback however many years.

Look around, to make sure the world is still there.

__Like ancient frescos entombed for centuries suddenly exposed to the day__.

The world is exactly the same and Nate snorts at himself. He might be mad but he’s never started seeing things. Best not start now. The crows watch him, the tiny animals rustle in brownsnap grass. The trees overhead are bare sentinels, leafless as Nate makes his slow way down the hill.

The low bushes hang with strange flowers. Nate snaps a leaf off and sniffs it, bites. His stomach roils warningly but the taste is good. Rich, fragrant. His pipboy beeps and he tastes the warning sickness of radiation at the back of his throat. He spits it out. Okay. His stomach kicks rebellion. Okay.

But it’s food, at least. He passes a strand of wild bluestained corn, looks down to a sparkling, crystalline steam and oh. Nate squats in the path and looks around. The world is half alien around him and hey, maybe he might as well be on another planet?

“Burroughs.” Nate’s voice cracks. “McCarthy.” Maybe the cold had frozen his vocal cords. “I name this world Brooktopia.” He laughs, low at his own joke.

The world is barren from pole to pole, no sign of human life for miles.

__They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world._ _

“And thank fuck for that.” Nate answers his own head. Maybe he is alone. Maybe he’ll just live here, go mad and starve to death. Okay. He can live with that.

His body is taut and easy around him, muscles and nerve fluid and quick to answer. He hops down to the stream, jumping from rock to rock like a child.

 

* * *

 

 

Nate dreamed.

__Worlds rich or fearful as such might offer themselves but never one to be._ _

It was a good dream. No memories in it. Nate can’t remember when he’d last dreamed. Half a decade and two hundred years, probably.

He’s warm in the bed. He’d found old tarp in the truck stop, and an oil stained blanket. But the real source of the heat in the heavy, soft body slumped against his legs.

Nate opens his eyes and the first light of the newborn morning glances across the shattered window panes, paints patterns on the far wall. Ancient faded posters, screaming dead ideologies against vanished enemies.

There’s a faint warning against perverts tacked up above the ancient telephone. Another proclaiming the black menace. Nate sits up and pulls them down, tears them up and tosses the rotting paper out of the window. The dog pricks up his ears and looks at him, a low, curious whine.

“At least you’re happy to see me.” Nate strokes his ears, and Dog whines happily. Nate picks up the telephone and turns it in his hands. Wonders if it has enough power left to call up his old home, tell Codsworth what he could do with his pills.

He lifts the handset.

__He picked up the phone and dialed the number of his father’s house in that long ago_ _

Nate looks down at the rotary dial. Circles a finger over and over and finally puts it back. He has no idea what the number was. He has no idea of any number. The memories cracked and cauterised and frostbitten. Gone utterly.

“If they wanted me to remember they shouldn’t have made me forget.” He smiles at Dog, strokes his head again. Dog pants. He turns the phone over and pulls it apart, picks out the circuitboard and copper wires. Maybe they’ll find someone, him and Dog, someone who won’t want to kill them like the last few had. Maybe they could trade.

Dog pants and jumps off the bed, coming back with a haunch of the dead molerat things they’d found off last night.

Nate’s stomach growls but the castaway food around them might as well be stone when he looks at it. He shakes his head sadly at Dog and drinks water from a canister to fill his stomach, clinches his belt again, tighter than yesterday.

__The holes in it marked the progress of his emaciation_ _

The stimpacks keep off the worst of the damage, but he’s going to be a skeleton within a week. Oh well. Nate shrugs. There’s a world out there. Maybe he can find something his mind can accept as food.

Dog eats the meat happily, then jumps about, eager to be off. Nate smiles.

 

* * *

 

 

The storm buoys up out of nowhere. “Ah hell.” Nick groans and they dash for shelter under a wooden lean-to under the trees. Barely in in time before the skies open and the rain comes in sheets.

Nate pulls out the old tarp from the Red Rocket, all those months ago, and between the two of them they throw it over the shack to keep the rain out. Dogmeat barks and runs about outside, jumping in the lake before charging back in the shaking himself vigorously over the pair of them until Nick throws a tarp over him too.

“Lovely.” Nick grumbles, flicks through his cigarette packs to find one that isn’t soaked. Selecting one, he leans over to Nate as he fumbles with a lighter in wet hands, their shoulders bumping a little more than companionably. In the gloom of the stormclouds his eyes glow gold. His lips quirk into a small, appreciative smile.

__If he is not the word of God God never spoke._ _

__Shut up.__ Nate snarls at the memory. Not here. Not now. Close and too far. Nick leans back against the rough earth behind them, blows out a stream of blue smoke. Nate watches the smoke, if only as an excuse to look away.

“You might want to look out.” Nick points out into the rain. “It’s worth seeing.”

Nate frowns at him, a faint smile, wondering if he’s being teased. He pulls the tarp off the grumbling Dogmeat and throws it over his head, it rattles like turretfire under the rain. It’s not a radstorm, and the sky is a simple, sullen grey, heavy and swollen with water. Nate squints and looks around. A lot of mud, the lake pocked and shimmering. The smell of dead leaves and moss. Quiet but for the falling rain. Air fresh and cool and sweet.

__This is a day to shape the days upon._ _

“Up there-” Nick’s ventured far enough to point up, the rainwater coursing off the sleek steel of his hand.

Nate blinks rainwater off his lashes, and peers up. Through the heavy drops, the trees around them are flecked green.

He rubs his eyes, looks up at the tree above. The barren branches are opening, putting out tiny green shoots in the storm.

“Hah!” Nate half laughs, like desert plants, dry and apparently dead until the rains come, and then blooming to life.

__-out of a green and leafy canopy-_ _

Nate glances back to Nick, then looks away too quickly, in case his friend can read his mind, or maybe read the same book. But Nick is looking up with him, rain running down his face, coiling in and around his broad, purely happy smile. “Always liked the rain.”

“Yeah.” Nate breathes. He extends the tarp out and Nick ducks under it. They sit together, watching the trees bloom as the rain hammers down on and around them.

There’s a line from his book for this moment. But Nate doesn’t think it. It’s not right. Not yet. Besides, both characters died at the end.

__

* * *

 

 

“And we’re looking for what in here?”

“Not really sure?” Nate shrugs. His cheek hurts from the brand and he feels- strange, fey. The world runs under his skin and he feels __alive__. As though everything he thought could just leap to life around him.

Which would be a nightmare, in any other world, but right now, all Nate feels is wonder.

The little tunnel they’re in is low and narrow, forcing both of them to bend double as they buckle down into the bowls of Far Harbor. “Don’t you just want to look?”

Nick snorts, runs a hand over Nate’s shoulder. Rests it there, in the crook of his neck. It’s the work of a heartbeat for Nate to lean over and press a kiss to those metal knuckles. Nick smiles.

“I read a book once,” Nate continues. “Where the two characters went into a cave. There was an animal down there. You could see through its skin.”

“What sort of animal?” Nick ducks under trailing roots.

“They didn’t say. Always imagined it a bit like a Deathclaw, only on all fours.”

“Hope we don’t run into one here.” They turn a corner. “What happened next?”

“Um- they woke up. It was a dream.”

“Not a great ending.”

“It wasn’t the ending. Came right at the beginning, I think.”

“Ah. Good book?”

“My favorite,” Nate tells him the title.

“Catchy. I’ll keep an eye out for it.” Nick smiles.

Nate can only smile back, turning his back to the tunnel for a moment.

Unfortunately while there weren’t any Deathclaws in the tunnel, there __were__  a large number of feral ghouls. They had to put a temporary end to book week.

 

* * *

 

 

“Do you know your birthday?” And maybe Nate’s too used to how things work for them, because that seems the best way of asking that question.

__the names of things slowly following those things into oblivion_ _

He rests his hands on his bag and reaches into his mind, tries to parse out the beggarly collection of memories, trace comparisons to holidays, to weather, to cold or summer. Finally, he shrugs. “No idea.” Slip away through his fingers and gone. He smiles sadly at Nick. “You?”

Nick shakes his head. “I use April 14th. He sits down beside Nate, on his haunches. “Day I- we-” he stumbles a little over the words, still uncertain, “escaped the institute.”

Nate nods, “Yeah.” His lip curls. Escape. Flee away into the dark and away from the light. Nate looks around at the dusty road, the nodding trees, their leaves shriveling quickly and falling after the rain.

__nothing in his memory anywhere of anything so good_ _

“I guess mine’s October 23rd then.”

Nick nudges him in his ribs and Nate rolls with the blow, catching Nick’s coat in both hands and pulling him down, down to the the dust and steaming sunlight and the hubflowers nodding over them.

His hands finding Nick’s body, taut and still and warm with living processes. Nick’s mouth warm and dry and sweet.

__Each others’ world entire._ _

__

* * *

 

 

Nate laughs when the pass through the Outskirts into the Glowing Sea. He looks around at the trees and __those__  are definitely dead. Nick gives him a slightly concerned look, but then this isn’t Nate’s usual breakdown warnings.

“Nah, just-” Nate waves at the vista. “All the books I read-”

“Doesn’t compare?”

“You kidding? This is the first bit that’s come __close__.” Nate pops a rad-x. It’s not so bad this far out, but he’s glad they packed a hazmat suit for later.

The wind warns of a coming storm and he revises that opinion. A pity. He’s hated that thing since Far Harbor. Better to feel the wind on your face, the storm on your skin. Not for the first time, Nate envies the growing number of people born immune to radiation.

The wind catches in a rotten, century old branch and the cauterised wood cracks, making them both jump. Nate snorts. “All the trees in the world are gonna fall sooner or later.”

“That’s a quote?”

“From that author I like.”

“Sounds the cheerful sort.”

Nate grins. “Yeah.”

He bends down to the first pool they find. Flecked gold and shimmering, oilslick gilt. Drinks down a mouthful and hears the giger counter scream. __Atom. Your blessing. Your world. Thank you.__

 

* * *

 

 

“Happy birthday.” Nick’s hands cast over his shoulders. The bones of his shoulderblades, collarbones still stark against his umber skin, redcast from his dress.

“Huh,” Nate glances at his pip-boy. 23rd October 2288. One year out of the vault. One year and two hundred and eleven since the nightmare ended. “So it is.” He turns in Nick’s arms. “Atom’s too.”

“Give Him my best.” Nate snorts, and gasps as Nick gently nips at his throat, the tender skin at the joint of neck and shoulder. “This is your day.”

“Hmm,” Nate smiles, relaxes in Nick’s arms, hooked around his waist. Nate rests his own hands on Nick’s shoulder. Watches him. That smile, oh, he’d first fallen in love with that smile. Those eyes, and brilliant, too-large soul that radiates from every part of him. Oh, thank you. Thank you. He will never thank the Institute for anything, so he raises that praise to Atom. “Do I get a present?” He leans in to snatch a fresh kiss, and perhaps begin said present forthwith.

The kiss comes, so warm. “You thought I wouldn’t?”

Nate pauses, honestly, he has no real idea what he would want. He has everything he wants. Most of it is in his arms. But Nick smiles, and lets go of him with one hand to pulls something out of his pack. It’s flat, and small, and wrapped in soft black cloth.

“A book!” Nate smiles. And not just a book, the cloth around it is silk, long and wound over and over. There are definitely possibilities with this silk. Oh yes.

But then Nate pulls the sweet silk off and- __oh__.

“Found it in the old Somerville place.” Nick strokes his back. “Decided to save it for today. Is it the same one you liked?”

“ _ _Yes__.” Nate breathes. Jet black cover. White printed words. He runs his thumb over the pages and loses his breath all over again. “Nick, this is- a first imprint. Look at the way the pages are cut- handcut. This is- three hundred years old or something-”

He gets another kiss and laughs helplessly against Nick’s mouth. Atom, oh Atom how the hell is he this lucky, his arm full with his boyfriend and a silk scarf and __this book__. An embarrassment of riches.

“I had a flick through.” Nick shakes his head, half laughs. “Nate, what the hell? Have you read this thing?”

“Repeatedly.” Nate grins, “Or- I probably did. I basically memorised it. Don’t remember actually reading it though.”

“And you like this?”

“Love it.” Nate kisses him again, a brief flash of pure happiness. “Always makes me smile when I read it.”

Nick rolls his eyes. “The world ends- and that’s not enough and you’re got to read about it too. Makes perfect sense.”

“Yep.” Nate draws out the ‘p’, smugly.

“Got it all right, did he?”

Nate barks a laugh. He looks around their little home in Sanctuary, the stacks of books, the broad, warm bed, the chair and couch tucked away. And outside, the waving strands of razorgrain and scattered planters dripping with fruit. Brahmin cropping up dry grasses. Fish from the local river. The water running clear, the flowers nodding around the small town, the sky so achingly blue.

“Not a fucking thing.” He grins, then pauses a moment. Nick blinks, curiously. Nate puts the book down, and cups Nick’s face in both of his hand. “Well, maybe one thing.” He admits.

He leans in. Nick kisses back, gentle, oh, so sweet.

“My world entire.” Nate smiles, and kisses him again, and again.


	7. Wellness of Mind and Body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick has issues. Nate is an idiot. Nick shouts a bit. Nate is sorry. Nate tries something else.

Nate looks at Dima as Nick walks away. Just the words, reaching out, __brother__ , just that much is almost too much for Nick. He can see the tension in his shoulders, the heavy coat drawn up until the brim of his hat almost touches the collar. Nate’s hands itch to touch him, draw up his head, give comfort. 

But he stays still, looks at Dima as the old synth sits down on the heavy steel chair. He looks back at Nate, steadily. Nate’s hand drifts to the still sore marks of last night, where Nick’s bare hand had drawn red weal patterns down his throat, just missing the still-healing brand on his cheek. He wonders if Dima can read them, and knows what he is to Nick. He wishes he could- could just __scream__ that devotion as loudly as he does to Atom. But Nick-

The rage is a knotted, furious lump of ice in his stomach. Nick is too ashamed.Of what he is. Of what he is to Nate.

And now Nate knows what Dima is to Nick in return, can read it on that impassive face even if they hadn’t unlocked his memories. He is telling the truth. He’d known Nick, before the memory implants. The hunger to __know__  gnaws tight at Nate’s belly, hot and angry. Who had Nick been, before the Institute had torn him apart?

Maybe it’s projection, this thirst for the past, when his own has been so decisively devoured. It’s too late for him, two hundred years and a thousand bombs too late. It’s not too late for Nick.

Dima frowns, very slightly, he looks like Nick- so much like him. Is this who Nick would have been, without the Institute’s mockery? Would he have stayed in the Commonwealth? Become a detective? Met Nate? Would have been happy with who he was? Happier than he was now?

Nate’s mouth twists. The pain is heavy, second hand. It doesn’t hurt less. He’s watched Nick tear himself apart, over and over for those very questions, not knowing he was rending Nate too with every twist.

“Don’t you hate him?” The words slip out before Nate intends it, falling dull as lead in the silent observatory.

Dima stiffen, his eyes narrow. He does not speak at once, looking Nate over and over. __I know you did not mean those words. What do you mean?__

“He took your brother away.” Nate continues, he walks up to Dima, swallows tight around the stiff, frozen hate. “The Institute destroyed him, and put a stranger in his place, and you were too late to save him.”

Dima closes his eyes, a flash of pain on that face. An expression Nate has seen far too often on Nick’s. “I believed that.” He says softly. “I could not have left him, if I did not.”

Nate nods. Waits.

“But now-” Dima opens his eyes, they are faded, bleak clouds where Nick’s shine like the sun. “I began to wonder before, of course, when I heard of him back in the Commonwealth. But now he is here- I know.” Dima smiles, it’s a little sad, but there’s joy there, a pure, peaceful joy that Nate envies with all his heart. “He didn’t die. He was there all along. I wish-” his voice breaks, shivers. “I wish I had known.”

Nate nods slowly, feels heat begin to boil, somewhere in his stomach. “I love him.” The words come easily, a perfect sentence, every part of it true. Dima nods, his smile widens a little. “When I told him that- he told me he didn’t know who that was.” He’d pushed Nate away, at first, but Nate was stubborn, and Atom, even he could see that Nick wanted him with all his heart. A few days and he’d opened his arms to Nate and Nate…

Nate had come home.

Dima is nodding, smile turning sad. “A common complaint with rewriting memories. I- I am sorry to hear Nick suffers.”

“Yes.” Nate’s voice is low, husky harsh. “The memories- haunt him. He hunts down ghosts in the name of more ghosts and I wish-” his voice breaks, scorched to carbon from the wildflame licking up from his esophagus. “I wish he could stay here, and now. With me.”

“Then I’m glad he has you.” Dima says simply.

“I guess I-” Nate swallows, tries to damp back the fire in his throat. “I need to know- was he different, back then? So different?”

And Dima laughs. A low, liquid sound. He shakes his head. “He may have different window dressing but-” he shakes his head again, fondly. “He hasn’t changed in the least.”

And the clenched, barely controlled flame in Nate’s stomach just- goes off, like a hand grenade. He nods, turns like a marionette, grabs the first thing that comes to hand- a large steel cylinder- and hurls it against the wall.

It hits with a shattering crash. Dima jumps right out of his chair but Nate doesn’t notice, he leaps down, grabs the cylinder again, and smashes it into the wall again. The crack it makes, the rusted sides shattering under his hands and splintering to the floor, is something against the helpless rage and hate and madness inside him.

He spins around to grab something else- and Dima’s hands close, slender but so very strong, around his wrists. “Please stop.”

Nate pulls for a moment, momentum too strong, but Dima is as strong as Nick and he can’t pull free. “You are hurting yourself.” Dima continues. “I do not think my brother would want that.”

Nate hesitates, stumbles. Dima pulls him forwards and Nate slumps down with him to the observatory steps. The rage is still there, but stagnant and helpless. The person he loves more than anything else is hurting, for no damn reason and for no damn point, and there is nothing and worse than nothing that Nate can do about it.

He looks dully at the shattered cylinder, the large dent it had left in the wall, so lost in drab reverie that at first he doesn’t even see it. Then he blinks, “Oh shit.”

Dima looks at him, concerned.

“That’s yours.” Nate points at the wreckage. “I’m- really fucking sorry. I made a huge mess.”

“It’s quite all right.” Dima smiles sadly. “You hurt yourself.”

The overload is still so huge Nate can barely feel beyond it, but there’s blood on his hands and his arms and shoulders are strained and stinging- warning of a whole new world of pain tomorrow. “I broke your stuff.”

“It’s replaceable.” Dima frowns. “Do you feel better?”

“No.” Nate half laughs. God. Gods newborn, and dead and buried. “I’m so- so fucking __mad__.”

Dima does not say anything and the words come, hot and burning as a volcano, as orgasm. “He hates himself. He hates himself for not being a- a fucking shadow. A dead fucking cop who wouldn’t have been fit to- to lick his goddamn boots.” His hands are shaking. His wants to __hit__  something. He wants to __hurt__  someone.

But the ones he wants to hurt are dead. Dead fifty years ago or more, for those monsters at the Institute. Two hundred and ten for the one who started this whole mess. “He lets himself wear down because he thinks fixing himself is traitorous to that memory.” The words boil over. “He thinks he’s nothing, thinks he’s not worth- anything, against some sick old bastard who probably wrecked more lives that he saved.”

His breath comes harder, faster. Dima is silent. “He treats himself like he’s nothing.” From a lack of better things to hit, Nate punches his own shoulder. The pain knocks him back to his senses if nothing else does, cutting off his breath.

Dima catches his hand- maybe worried he’d do it again. “Sorry.” Nate gasps. “I’m just- I’m so fucking angry I could bite a __deathclaw__ \- and probably give it rabies. Do you have anything I could just- smash? Something you want smashed? I want to- to throw shit off the fucking roof right now.”

“We have some cinderblocks.” Dima smiles gently. “You can throw those from the roof. Kasumi mentioned she would like a rock garden.”

Nate blinks. “Okay. That would be- yeah.” He blinks, looks at Dima. Maybe it’s months with Nick, but he thinks he can read something in the tautness of Dima’s stripped shoulders, the tightness of that sculpted mouth. “Want to come throw rocks too?”

Dima pauses, then smiles, its a little sad. “Yes. I think I would like that.” He’d lost Nick too. Atom, how many people can one shitty cop __hurt__? Dead two hundred years and he’s still hurting them all now. Bastard. __Bastard__.

 

* * *

 

“Bastard!” Nate screams, and hurls the cinderblock off the balcony. It smashes into concrete fragments and dust. “Why don’t you just __die__!” 

He glances at Dima, Dima is holding a large rock. He looks down at it. “I’m not sure I-”

“He tried to hurt you.” Nate spits. “He took your brother away- not forever, but he did anyway.”

Something sparks in Dima’s eyes, a faint gold flicker. “My brother.” He repeats. A flare. ‘ _ _My brother!__ ” The block sails out and clears the fences completely, vanishing down the hill and into the fog. There’s a crack, and the snarl of something unlucky enough to be in the way.

“Oh.” Dima blinks, eyes fading to grey, “I didn’t mean-”

Nate doesn’t let him finish. “Why are you still __hurting him!”__  Nate roars, grabs another block- he feels something pull warningly in his back but doesn’t care. “ _ _Burn in hell__!”

Dima hesitates, and Nate hands him another rock. “Go on. It helps.”

His face twists and- Nate knows that look. He __hates__  that look. Nick in pain. Nick, trying to measure himself up to a man that could never have so much as __dreamed__  to be him, in that world. “I saved him.” Dima breathes. “I saved him and __you took him anyway-__ ”

This block hits the fence and knocks a few bricks free, cracking in half.

“He hurts himself for __you__.” Nate shouts. His brick doesn’t get more than three feet, but shatters in a very satisfying way. “I can help him- and he won’t let me near him __for you-”__

“What are you two doing?!” The shout stops them both dead like guilty children. Nick stumbles backwards across the courtyard, craning his head up to look at them.

“Uh, bonding.” Nate drops his cinderblock. The worst of the anger is ebbing and his body is one giant, swollen throb of pain. “And making Kasumi a rock garden.”

Nick looks around at the ground- which rather looks like the surface of the moon right now. “I’ve had a word with Kasumi, come down and we can talk.”

Nate hesitates, Dima smiles and pushes him gently. “Go. Thank you. I- I needed that.”

Nate smiles sadly, together they look back over the side at the exasperating, maddening, impossibly wonderful man who’s got them both tied up in knots.

 

* * *

 

Nate has been seeing far too much of that screwdriver.

It’s Nick’s wrist joint. Without the padding of his skin, its coming loose more and more often, the threading wearing out. Nate’s hands itch and burn with the need to __fix__ , to heal. He builds turrets for Sanctuary, hammers new panels into the life-giving wall of Far Harbor, he digs wells and births generators and water purifiers to give life to dying settlements. Now, the one person in the world he would give his own hands for, will not so much as let him hold the __fucking screwdriver__.

“I can help.” Nate cannot bite the words back any more, as Nick quickly puts the screwdriver away, just a little too slow for Nate to see. Turns away too quickly to the ruined spa they’re picking their way through. “Please.” He’s begging. “Please, __let me help__.”

Nick flexes his hands, doesn’t look at him. “It’s fine.”

“I can get you new screws,” Nate presses, desperate. “Atom’s gift- I can restructure your-”

"No.” Nick’s voice is a harsh, snapping finale. Nate’s mouth falls closed for a moment, but-

“I can help.” he says, his throat burning with words he can no longer bite back. “Nick, this is what I’m good at. You’ve seen me work-”

“ _ _Just stop.”__ Nick spins around, snarling,“I’m not a- a damn __turret__  you can just fix. You can’t just drag me to- to a workshop every time you feel like it!”

Nate’s mouth is bone dry. His stomach knots, dies and rots inside him. “I didn’t-” His voice comes out tiny, a creeping mouse of a thing.

Nick’s mouth presses flat. He pulls out a cigarette, turns away to light it even as Nate reaches for his pack of lighters. His heart claws at the inside of his ribcage, fights to break free. “I’m sorry.” Please. “I didn’t mean-”

“I know.” Nick says finally. A stream of cold blue smoke with the words. “Just- stop.”

Nate falls silent. Looks down at his feet. Feels absolutely awful.

Nick smokes his way through the cigarette, and tosses the butt to the ground. “I’m not a turret.” He repeats. “I’m not a generator, or a Mr Handy or- __a machine__.” His voice is taut.

__You are__. Nate wants to say. __And that’s okay__. Atom, he sometimes __envies__ Nick, to have the freedom to mend yourself over and over, nothing too far gone that it cannot be replaced. To back up your own memories so they cannot be lost. He says nothing. Nick’s hands are shaking.

“I don’t think that.” Nate says finally. “It’s not what I meant.” But he cannot help it. “I’m an __engineer__  Nick, you don’t have to-”

“You want to see me like that?” Nick tries to glare, but he just looks tired. “Just- bolts and spare parts?”

“I love bolts and spare parts.” Nate says helplessly, steps closer.

Nick’s mouth quirks in a smile, holds out his hand. His skin hand. Nate takes it anyway in both of his. “Not like that, you don’t.”

“Any way you want.” Nate pleads. “I love you.”

Nick sighs, closes his eyes. “Then do it for me.” He digs in his pockets “Maybe I don’t want you to see me like that.”

“But-” __It’s you.__ Nate wants to say, and doesn’t. But maybe Nick can read his face, he frowns and looks away.

“ _ _I__ don’t want to see myself like that again.” His voice is taut. “You ask Dima what it was like in the Institute.” Nate goes cold. “I don’t have many memories from then, maybe he can explain better, but-” his voice cracks, lips pressed flat, he closes his eyes. “I remember enough. Wasn’t a fan.”

“I’m sorry.” He’s wrecked it. He was a fucking idiot, he didn’t understand, and he wrecked it. “I- I didn’t think.”

Nick shakes his head, pulls out another smoke. Nate pulls out a lighter and looks at him, pleading. Nick hesitates, then smiles sadly and leans in to let Nate help him.

“I love you.” Nate says helplessly. “I just want-”

“I know.” Nick draws in a breath, exhales blue. “But- leave it. I know it’s hard. I can’t-” He glances away- to the south, over the sea and through the earth and back a hundred years. “I don’t want to go through that again.”

__You wouldn’t__. But how can he even promise that? Maybe Nick is right. Alone in a lab, being picked through, everything you are sifted through and found wanting- needing to be __corrected.__  His mouth is stiff and bitter with the memory of the pills. He should have known. He should have understood if no one else could. “I’m an idiot.”

Nick smiles, a real smile. “Yeah, you can be.”

Nate nods, sighs, looks away and his eyes are drawn out to the wreckage of Aldersea Day Spa, the tattered towels, the ridiculous scented candles drowned out by blood and viscera, the marble slabs cracked.

Nate doesn’t often imagine what the world might have been like before, too many dark shadows. But here-

Huh. Well, there’s an idea.

 

* * *

 

 

There’s a note at the agency, Nick picks it up carefully, and a small, pressed tato flower falls out. Well, that at least tells him who it’s from. He’s been wondering where Nate has been for the last few days. “ _ _Come to Homeplate. I love you.”__

Nick smiles, rubs the petals between his fingers. The flower goes between the flyleaves of his book, along with the hubflower, lilac and aster. A little collection of gifted flowers.

He closes the book, presses the petals flat. Leaves it on his desk and stands, takes his coat and hat. Why Homeplate though? He pushes the door open. Nate has never been able to make much of that place. If he’d been planning an evening together, usually Nate would have contrived some way of getting him and Ellie out of the agency for a few hours and set it up there.

It’s a short walk, he nods to a few people, avoids ugly looks from others. He takes the back door to Homeplate, knocks.

“You can come in.” Nate’s voice. Nick smiles against the thrill it sends down his spine. Goodness, how did he get this lucky?

The lights are off when he pushes the door open. Nick steps in, and when he closes the door, it takes a few moments for his eyes to adjust. Too long, and getting longer. Nick pushes the thought away, no.

“Why are you in here?” Nick turns, trying to pick Nate out, there are lights, but they come as faint blotches as his eyes struggle to focus.

Nate’s hands brush across his shoulders. “Waiting for you.” Nate purrs in his ear. His thumbs hook under Nick’s coat, pulls it loose. “I was worried the candles were gonna burn out.”

Candles? Nick breathes in. His taste sensors are mostly gone, but he can still smell reasonably well. “Did you go hunting Stingwings?”

“I took Piper,” Nate hums against his neck. “And Dogmeat of course.”

“Had to be a lot of them.” The candles are sweet and warm, pretty different to the reek of brahmin fat tallow. He can see a little more now. The candles are scattered around, blooming gold light in inviting pools, There’s a tall, reclining chair in the middle of the room, draped in soft cloth. There are a few tables, but they’re covered in cloth too.

It’s not the usual set up for their evenings. Nick turns in Nate’s arms. Nate is smiling, the candlelight playing in sweet patterns across his nose and full, welcoming mouth. “What are you doing?”

“Treating you.” Nate strokes his back. “I thought- after what happened Far Harbor- you deserved something nice. So you’ve got a spa day.”

Nick blinks, his lips twitch. “A spa day?”

“Yep.” Nick grins. “I thought- you said you hated checkups because of- um, well, you know. So I thought, how did people do checkups before? Nice checkups? So- well.” Nate waves a hand around the house. “I never knew what to do with this place anyway, so now it’s the world’s first synth spa.”

Nick snorts, he can’t help it. “Not sure you’re going to get a lot of customers.”

“One is just fine.” Nate hooks his hands around his hips.

“This is just a new scheme to get your hands in my wires.”

“It is.” Nate agree easily. “Did it work? I can do something else if it didn’t.”

Nick laughs and- God, sometimes he doesn’t know if he wants to kiss this man or shake him. The thought of Nate seeing him- like that, is still uncomfortable, but-

“I’ll give it a try.” He says finally. Goodness knows he needs work, and this sounds nicer than asking KLEO to pick him over in Goodneighbour. And if him saying yes makes Nate's face light up like that then- well, then they’re both getting something out of it.

“Want to get changed?” Nate turns him gently.

He’s made a sort of changing room from stacks of boxes covered in cloth. “Did you buy out Fallon’s?”

“Um, pretty much.” Nate kisses him, “Okay, I’ll get get ready while you’re at it.”

There’s a dressing gown inside the little closet of the changing room. One of those soft ones, fluffy flannel. Nick’s hands hesitate on his clothes, and it’s a struggle to push through and strip off, remove every trace of identity of self before burying himself in the dressing gown. It helps a little. It hangs warm and close around him, and Nick brushes his face against it. It smells clean and fresh, new made rather than pre-war. Nate spent a lot on this. “You sure you want to get oil on this?” He calls out.

“It’s kinda the point.” Nate answers. “It should clean fine, don’t worry.”

“It’s white.” Nick knots the belt around his waist, and steps out.

“That’s what you get in the best spas.” Nate is looking under the cloth on the table. The tools there are almost sparkling, they are so clean. There are a few Nick doesn’t even recognise, maybe made just for him. Nate covers them again, quickly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

Nick sighs, shakes his head. What a pair they are, feeling their way like blind men over a rocky landscape. “What do we do now?”

“You get on here-” Nate waves a hand to the chair, “And I- take care of you. Massages and everything.”

Nick grins, slides himself on the long lounge chair. It’s long enough that his feet are propped up, his body inclined back comfortably against the padded backrest. The dressing gown slides open a little, revealing the tattered flesh of Nick’s right leg. He pulls it closed quickly, but Nate puts his hand on Nick’s leg. “It’s okay.” He waits until Nick relaxes again against the chair, then reaches up, and puts his hands on Nick’s shoulders, fingers spreading out to feel out the little knots of wires and sensors.

Nick’s eyes start to drift closed. The sensations wash over him in soft, tender waves. His mouth quirks in a smile. Nate’s hands map out over his chest, find all the little tender places he had learnt from their lovemaking. “This a swedish massage?” Nick murmurs.

“Nope.” Nate kisses his shoulder, “Traditional Boston wire stimulation. S’a tradition going back hundreds of years, helps relax your systems and promotes comfort and well-being.”

Nick laughs. “You got your business sell all worked out.”

“Yep.” Nate kisses him again. “Always wanted to get my hands on hot robots.”

Nick’s laugh trembles a little, as Nate’s hands slide down under the dressing gown to the missing panels on his sides. Nick stiffens a little as Nate’s fingers twine in his wires, rub them together, pressure and gently pulling tension and oh- that feels __good__ -

“I love you.” Nate purrs in his ear. “You’re so goddamn beautiful.”

Nick would like to say something in the vein of- __you need glasses sweetheart__ , but the words get lost somewhere to his throat. “I’m gonna just open you up now darling,” Nate continues. “You okay with that?”

Nick hesitates, __no__  is welling up in his throat, but Nate is waiting, hands on the remaining plate over his thorax. His hands are warm, gentle. Nick opens his eyes, looks up into Nate’s face. Trust. He could just pull it open, push his hands into Nick’s body, but he won’t. It’s all down to Nick. It’s his choice.

He nods.

Nate’s fingers curl just under the plate and- he must have prepared for this, because his fingers find the catches with practiced ease, and Nick shivers as cold air rushes into his circuits, a shudder of panicked vulnerability. So often, this has been the prelude to something hideous.

But Nate’s hands are gentle, almost reverent as they touch his wiring, his coolant systems. Nate kisses him, soft as hubflower petals, on his cheek. His hands stroke connectors, heatsinks, down and through the wires until his fingers caress the exposed steel of his spine.

It feels wonderful. Terrifyingly vulnerable, with one twist of his hands Nate could kill or worse than kill him, but wonderful all the same. Intoxicating, lifting him up and beyond his own body as Nate caresses and pets and learns all the sweetest, most tender spots in Nick’s systems. It floods his body in cool pleasure, trickles down his throat like raw sugar and it takes him a moment to realise than Nate is actually __doing something__  down there beyond just giving him a wire massage.

They must be just the minor wires, because the little spots of numbness are so small he barely even notices them, Nate’s voice filtering through to him in fits and starts. “You’ve lost a lot of insulation,” Nate murmurs. “Just swapping out a few bits and pieces now,” Nick makes a low, warning growl in his throat. “It’s okay, they’re gen 2 bits and I checked with Faraday and Dima, you’re totally compatible. See? It’s gonna feel so good when I’m done. You’ve been bleeding out a lot of power.”

The words tremble inside him, uncertain. This is… it feels… __wrong__. To put pieces of a dead machine into his body. But he __is__ a machine so what is this but organ donation? He is not a machine. He is. Nick screws his eyes shut to make the hammering argument in his head stop.

Nate’s hands are on the back of his head, always a shock against the bare skin there, some part of him always surprised by his lack of hair. Nate strokes, caresses wires, digs under at the corners of his jaw and the pits at his temples. It feels so. Goddamn. Good.

“This is you.” Nate whispers. “It’s okay. It’s you. I love you. I love every part of you. This is the person I love. No one else.”

The words relax the taut, trembling knots inside him, edges one side over the other. You. This is you. It feels like- a war, something that had been raging inside him for years- and one side had finally been given the upper hand.

“You’re better than anyone.” Nate continues. “You have nothing to envy anyone for. You’re the best person I know. You. Right now. You. I love you.”

His hands are inside him again, touching, so gently. They are moving on from the wires, tracing out his coolant pipes. “This is a part of spa therapy?” He growls.

“Totally.” Nate kisses his cheek. “Coolant pipe massage, all the celebrities are going for it.”

 Nick snorts, but Nate is- is helping. His fingers are finding the stiff points of blockages, detritus build up. He squeezes, breaks them up, and Nick feels a faint jolt as a little of the pressure on his pump eases off. Nick closes his eyes again and Nate traces through his systems, through the coiled tubes in his abdomen, down his legs, his arms, mapping up along his throat. He doesn’t go beyond that, although Nick is half ready to pull his own head open for Nate to finish the job.

Then Nate finds a little knot of wires in his neck and Nick’s mind goes into a happy little blot of static. Oh, that’s good 

“We’re going to let that cycle through.” Nate has been talking, Nick just nods happily. He feels- warm, sweet, utterly coddled as though Nate had swaddled him in fur and silk. He feels incredible, electric and absolutely relaxed. “Then top you up-”

Nick cracks one eye open, Nate has a funnel in his coolant tank and a large bottle of something pouring in. “’s good, is it?” Nick slurs.

“Dima swears by it."

Nick nods, closes his eyes, and just- lets it all go. He feels just so damn good. Nate feels so damn good. His pump picks up pace and- Nick has no idea how to compare it, he’s only even topped his coolant up before, he’s never tried to replace the lot. It’s like- mud and clear water, Brahmin fat and gasoline. He lazily opens his eyes. Nate has a pipe in his waste tank and his lips wrapped around it, sucking and- oh- __oh__. That- that is not something Nick thought he’d ever get to see. “D’you swallow?”

Nate pulls the pipe away, lets the waste coolant leak out. “For you? Anytime.” he sweeps in for a kiss, bright and sharp with Nick own liquids.

“Don’t.” Nick manages, and rolls his eyes back and lets Nate get on with it.

Nate’s hands. Nick’s wires. He loses track of what Nate is doing, washing back and forth through him and oh, it feels good. It feels __so good__. He vaguely registers Nate kissing his steel fingers, one at a time. Then his feet, one kiss on the hollow steel of his instep. Nate probably did something there too, but he missed it.

It’s not sleep. Not diagnostics or anything like that. His mind simply- goes slack, easy and slow as molasses. It feels like sleep though, he opens his eyes to a world that seems softer at the edges, warmer, more welcoming and kind.

And only some of that is because a naked Nate is sitting in his lap.

“Hello,” Nick smiles, reaches out easily and runs the steel fingers of his hand down Nate’s flank. He shivers happily.

"Like it?” Nate grins.

"Like what?” Nick looks down and- oh.

That’s new. There’s a new bolt in his wrist, sleek and shiny. He flexes it, back and forth before pressing his palm flat against Nate’s hip, relishing the rich, radiating heat of his skin.

“It’s pneumatic.” Nate grins. “No more screws. I’ve had the schematics for-” Nick kisses him firmly and Nate __melts__  against him, soft and liquid and welcoming and oh Nick __wants__. It’s not a human desire, he doesn’t have the parts or hormones for it. He just- wants. All of Nate, every part of him. If he could pull Nate apart and fish through his heart and lungs and intestines just as Nate has just done him, he would. He would __devour__  him, make Nate part of him and never, never let him go.

It has occurred to him this might not be the most emotionally healthy thing, but he doesn’t care. 

Nate closes his eyes and kisses back, devours his mouth and Nick tastes him in his mouth, feels him rut against his body, sweat damp on Nick’s skin and- yes, yes. All of this. Sweat and skin and sex and- yes. He wants to taste Nate in his mouth, feel him all over, let him stain and soak through his skin until he can smell him on his body forever. Mine. Mine. Forever my own.

Nate grinds against him and- “How long’s that been there?” Nick reaches down and gives Nate a couple of good, hard strokes. Nate __whines__  deep in his throat.

“Told you.” He pants. “I _ _love__ screws and spare parts.”

“Guess you’re in heaven now,” Nick smiles and Nate opens his eyes, startling bright and near-yellow in the candlelight.

He laughs, low and sweet. “Oh Atom- you- how could you- you don’t know. You have no idea.” He kisses Nick then, bright and fierce and sharp-toothed. “Heaven. Nirvana and Division. All mine.”

And maybe Nick does know. He didn’t come from the past, not in the same way Nate had, and maybe he didn’t really understand. But right now, feeling fresh coolant pump through him and new wires blaze inside him, even his own eyes sharper and keener in the low light of the burning candles. And Nate, beautiful, delicious Nate straddling his lap- this must be some kind of heaven, if it’s got such angels in it.

Nate throws his head back and- yes, he must have been close, so very close throughout this whole show, because three more strokes and he is coming in hot, delicious spurts in Nick’s hand. It stains Nick’s gray skin white, drips down over a thorax plate he didn’t even know had been replaced, down to the parts he is too-aware he is missing.

Nate slumps against him, shivers long and sweet. Nick reaches up and cards his finger through his coarse, raw hair.

Nate sits back, lopsided and wonderful and-

He is so happy. So, so happy. Living light, like the sun. At this moment, Nate is perfection and Nick- Nick is a part of this. He made this happen. He had a part of this.

The two of them, fumbling, finding their blind way within the world. Maybe they found something good here. A bright, warm hearth of comfort and safety, secret, no ones but theirs.

“I love you,” Nate’s breath is soft on his cheek. Smells of mutifruit and hubflower tea. “I’ll love you forever."

Nick puts his arms around him, pulls him close, strokes his back, the sharp knuckles of his spine, the edged bones of his hips. “I-” Nick doesn’t know what to say. How can he promise anything, even himself, if he doesn’t even know who he is?

But looking up in Nate's hazel-amber eyes, his smile- maybe this is it. Maybe this is the moment he can hold to, freeze and hold in his memory. __This is who I am__.Standing in stark light to the shadows of the old Nick Valentine.


	8. Traps and Sacrifices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It took Nate six months to confront the Institute. This is why.

Nate kneels down beside by the pool, it’s a deep, leaf-red brown under the flecks of gold, fine and crisp as goldleaf. It flickers as Nate dips his hands through it, cups a mouthful of a water, and drinks.

The giger counter crackles to a scream, the water tastes of metal and a rich, musty hint like old blood and dead leaves. Nate looks down into his wet hands, down at the water. Here, utterly and completely __here__. The sky is tinged green overhead, the trees broken and most definitely dead. Nate already loves this place.

Nick is sitting on the top of the rise above him, smiling. Nate knows that smile, the _you are being a fool but I love you_  smile. Nate meets his eyes and shrugs, at least Nick doesn’t say anything. He gets up as Nate climbs up the hill and they walks towards the empty, blasted plain of the Glowing Sea. “You are taking radaway when I say so.”

“Sure,” the rads aren’t too bad yet, nothing he hasn’t been used to in the Nucleus. Maybe it’s Pavlovian, but he can feel the tension that’s knotted up in his spine ever since the Memory Den slowly relax. It feels __good__ , the world easing out from it’s usual jagged mess into- well, the even, smooth desert of the Glowing Sea.

It’s like- combing through smooth sand, like sliding a hand through rounded pebbles, light in deep water. Nate stops and closes his eyes, relishing. Nick walks into his back. “Sorry.” Nate murmurs.

“Do warn me if you plan on walking with your eyes closed.” Nick steadies him. “I- oh goodness, really?” Nate presses his head into the neck on Nick’s coat. He doesn’t pull away though, puts his arms around Nate, and maybe his arms are a little too tight- no, there’s nothing like too tight here- very close and warm and so, so good.

“I _love_ this place.” Nate sighs. “And _you’re_ here.” It’s perfection. 

“There is a Deathclaw two miles away.” Nick hugs him back.

“I can see them coming!” Nate whines happily, “Praise Atom! Did I tell you about the time I saw the bomb go off? Not sure why I didn’t go blind.”

“And miss the happiest day of your life?” Nick’s chin presses into his shoulder, probably tracking the Deathclaw. “It’s coming this way.”

“Nah, that was the day I met you. Or maybe today.” Nick’s coat smells of oil and cigarettes and coffee and __home__  and the world outside is nice and calm and sweet and nothing bad can ever happen here __ever__ , everything’s been so knotted up inside him since Kellogg and it’s finally starting to feel okay. “I want to move here.”

“Nate,” Nick half laughs. “That Deathclaw’s seen us. Nate, please put a bullet in its head.”

“Right.” Nate lets go, reluctantly. The Deathclaw is still a good half mile away, but its eyes are fixed on them and it is definitely readying to charge. He gives it another couple of seconds to see if it is going to change its mind and respect Atom’s peace, but- “Oh well.” Apex slides easily into his hands, lifts it up to his shoulder in a single sweet motion and fires.

It’s not his best shot. It takes two bullets before the Deathclaw goes down head over heels- or would, if it had a head. “There.” Nate lets Apex slide back on its strap. “Back to the hug?”

Nick pushes him back lightly. “Come on.”

Oh Atom. Praise and burn him. Nate half wonders what was here before the bombs fell, that made Atom just decide nothing was to be done but to torch everything in a thirty mile radius. It’s a wonderful improvement regardless. There’s a plane full of glowing mushrooms. Glowing mushrooms! Half the Deathclaws are straight up asleep and they just walked past them and there was even a small church of Atom at ground zero.

“I wish we didn’t have to leave.” Nate sighs finally, walking out of the Crater of Atom.

“I think I might have guessed.” Nick rests a hand on his shoulder. He hesitates for a moment. “I don’t blame you.”

“I like it here.” Yes, it’s pathetic. He’s whining. Sometimes, it’s nice to whine.

“I think I got that too.” His thumb rubs warm circles on his shoulder.

“You’re a detective, you’re good at this sort of thing.”

“I’m pretty sure those feral ghouls could have- did the Pharaohs open a franchise here?”

Nate stops. Looks. There is a fucking pyramid in the middle of the desert. Nate glances at Nick quickly, but he can see it too. Good, his brain hasn’t finally thrown the last screw and started with hallucinations.

Nick meets his eyes, starts to smile and oh sweet fucking Atom he __loves__  that smile. Disbelief and amazement and so much fun. Dear Atom, it’s been too long. “Do you want to explore it?” There’s something a little taut in his shoulders, a little sad in the quirk of his mouth.

They start towards it, cautious as though approaching a downed Behemoth. The pyramid does not take off, explode or vanish. “What the hell?” Nate is half laughing as they find the door. “What the everloving fuck?”

“I can’t believe I’m seeing this.” Nick looks around. Nate looks down through hundreds of feet of space and walkways and small nuclear bombs. He starts laughing, trying to stifle it. It just doesn’t get better than this. He’s found something extraordinary, and is sharing it with the best possible person.

“This is _insane_.” Nate grins, “This place would go up in _such_ a firework.”

“I think some of your friends had the same idea.” Nick points and- damn.

“I think it was the molerats.” Nate loves his brothers and sisters in Atom but- they should really, _really_ leave exploring the Commonwealth to people who have actual bullets in their guns. No one nonhuman even notices their little radpistols.

The bodies are… less than great, and it’s like Nate’s happiness has a puncture. It feels- melancholic. Nate leans on the railing, looks down and- Atom, why can’t it just be this? Just this, scavving and detective cases and- nothing more?

Right. Shaun. Right. Nate pinches the bridge of his nose. The past still biting at his heels. Nick settles beside him, Nate can feel his eyes on him. “You okay?”

Nick nods slowly. He doesn’t look okay. He looks down at the scattered bodies and something shudders through his body. Nate strokes his arm. “Hey,”

“Fine.” Nick shakes himself out of whatever bleak thoughts have swallowed him. “You look tired,” He tries to smile, it- doesn’t quite work. “This place should have a bunk room.”

It does. Nate drags out the bodies, when he comes back Nick is sitting on the bed. He’s staring out at the far wall. Nate slides in beside him. Nick doesn’t move for a few moments, lost in thoughts, then closes his eyes and sighs. “Nick?”

Nick is still for another moment, then turn and rests his head against Nate’s shoulder. It’s such a surprise Nate doesn’t move at first, then pulls his gasmask off, and tries to sorta- envelop Nick because he- doesn’t do this. This is the first time he’s ever even _indicated_  a need for support. Nate would like to think it’s because Nick feels comfortable with him now and is starting to feel okay about being vulnerable but- nah. This is very, very bad.

“Okay.” Nate hugs him very tight. “Whatever you need? We are doing. Whatever is freaking you out? Is not happening. I promise.”

“You’re still going to go after Shaun.” Nick’s shoulders are tight under his hands.

Nate pauses, looks away and- “Okay. Sorry for wasting your time.”

Nick looks up, frowns. “What?”

“Wasting your time.” Nate shifts. “I mean, I hope you think it’ll be worth it in the long run, but- case closed, I guess. Sorry for dragging you halfway across the Commonwealth. Not sorry for rescuing you.”

Nick sits back. “You want to- give up?”

Nate winces, stamps down hard on the little voice whispering this is a _child,_ a helpless child no one cares for that has been taken by the biggest monsters of the Commonwealth. But then there’s- _Nick_. Nick vs a child he has exactly fifteen minutes worth of memories of and wouldn’t have the first idea what to do with. “Yeah.”

And Nick closes his eyes. “Thank god.” And drops his head back down.

_Atom_ , Nate wants to correct, but- yeah, even he isn’t this stupid. Right now, he needs to shut up, and hold his boyfriend.

Nick is quiet, face buried in his coat. “You don’t care?”

It’s a stab, but he deserves it. “I’m the world’s worst father.” Nate agrees. “I will never, never breed again. I never wanted to in the first place. I-” he breaks off. “I’m not gonna lie, I was having a bad feeling about this.”

Nick closes his eyes, then nods. He smiles and it’s working properly now, he sits back. “And I’m not going to lie, that makes me feel a __lot__  better.”

Nate should not feel so relieved. “I kinda only followed it up so far because it was your case and- um, I kinda didn’t want you to think I was the kind of guy who’d abandon their kid.”

“From one detective to another,” Nick takes his hands, rubs his fingers. “What tipped you off?”

Nate hesitates, then sighs. “That wasn’t Shaun.”

Nick nods slowly, waits. Nate closes his eyes. “In Kellogg’s memories. He was _white_ , Nick. My memories might be shot but that’s kinda a giveaway.”

“And Kellogg knew we were coming.” Nick continues. “He knew your name. He wasn’t even surprised. He didn’t need to stay in Diamond City, but the Commonwealth has only one detective, and they needed to make sure we had a lead.”

Nate is quiet for a long moment, enough time for the ice to trickle down his throat and lodge in his belly. For the simple, solid fact to settle in his mind is horrific certainty. “They knew we were coming.”

“That’s what I figured.”

It’s like- like stopping just in time, and feeling the wind blast of the train that would have run him over. No. Not just him. Him, they’d have killed. God- _Nick_. What had he been _thinking?_ Atom’s mercy, _what could have happened-_

“Okay.” Nate takes a deep breath. “We leave. We leave Virgil alone and don’t put him at risk. We back the fuck off and don’t put us at risk. Me and you and oh for fuck’s sake what if they’d found-”

“Yes.” Nick says flatly. He’s been thinking about this. Of course he has, Dima’s his brother. And Nick has been living in Commonwealth for more than half a decade and has probably been thinking of __all__ the people who would have been slaughtered if Nate had kicked that stingwing nest. Fuck, Nate has been an idiot.

“Okay.” Nate shakes his head. “I- didn’t think.”

“It’s your son.” Nick sighs.

“Let’s face it, It wasn’t exactly the ideal family situation.” Nate rubs his face. “I _should_  have thought. I’m sorry.” He pulls a face. “I might have wanted to give up a few times. I’m _happy_  here, I didn’t want to drag in something from- back then. But I- thought I was just being selfish, and I- I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Nick snorts. “Nate, I’ve seen a lot of horrible things. Not walking into an obvious trap set up by the worst people in the Commonwealth doesn’t even come close.”

There’s nothing to say. Nate looks down at his hands. He has maybe three memories of Shaun. One in his crib, one of him in Nora’s arms as they ran. And one through the half frosted glass of the cryopod. All but the last are so disjointed he can barely make anything out of them. A tiny, wrapped bundle of a human being, skin a little lighter than his, but still deep brown. Black eyes large and alien in a tiny face.

Alien.

If he’d ever felt anything for his child, the pills had taken that too. Nate drops his head in his hands. “Am I a monster?”

“There are a lot of monsters in this story.” Nick pulls him close. “You’re not one of them. It’s a monstrous situation.”

“I can’t risk this.” Nate says finally. “Not for Shaun. Not-” Nate looks away.

“You can say it.” Nick pulls him close. “Not me.”

Nate nods miserably. He’s pretty sure trading your kid for your boyfriend is trademark horrible person behavior. Then again, trading a probably-already-dead rapechild for not having Nick get caught by the Institute and- _shutupshutupshutup_ blot out the memories of the Gen 2 synths, empty and soulless and mindless and _stopitstopitstiopit MAKE IT STOP-_

Nate shudders. Nick holds him. It takes a few minutes for the worst of it to work out of him and his memory blotches out a bit, but- he’s okay. He’s dodged the worst of it. They both have. Fuck. Okay Nate. Important memo time. Pre war stuff stops now. No exceptions. There’s nothing but death waiting for us there. You live here now. End of.

“Can we stay in a Glowing Sea a bit more?” Nate says finally. His voice is a little rough. He hopes he wasn’t screaming. “I like it here.”

“Sure we can.” Nick kisses him. “As long as you want.”

Sounds pretty good. Here. Now. Home.


	9. Everything I Ever Wanted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nate falls through a floor, Nick doesn't know much about kink, and despite everything, there is sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is porn. Both in world and in fic. Nate likes Tom o' Finland.

It starts with Nate falling through the floor.

This corner of Boston has been more or less left alone by scavvers, most likely due to the nest of enormous ants currently leaking ichor into the hubflowers. Most of the houses are gutted, but there’s a little blacked out shop that looks untouched.

“Here you go.” Dogmeat whines miserably. Nick upends the bottle of water into his muzzle, washing out the bitter stink of ant blood. The whining turns to pants, Dogmeat’s tongue lolls, then licks Nick’s hand. “Better? Good boy.”

“You guys okay?” Nate is trying to peer in through the window, around the edges where the old paint is peeling. “Don’t think anything’s in here.”

Nick pats Dogmeat and walks over. He tries the door, it’s locked.

“I can-” Nate starts, reaching in his pocket for lockpicks.

Nick shakes his head, digs his metal fingers into the rotting wood, and pulls the lock out with a wet cracking sound.

“Or you could do that.” Nate crosses his arms across his chest, his eyes glint. “Show off.”

“It’s an insult to your fingers.” Nick tosses the rusted, jammed lump of garbage to the ground.

“I can think of better things I can do with them.” Nate bumps into Nick as he walks to the door, very lightly, but just enough so Nick can feel the length of his body against his.

“Hmm.” Nick runs his metal fingers down the back of Nate’s coat, catching on the juts of his shoulder blades. “Later.”

The shop inside is pitch dark, Nick digs out his old flashlight, Nate turns the light on his pipboy. The ancient, dusty shelves are light up in a mixture of green, underwater glow and strobe flashes. “Liquor shop?”

“Liquor shop.” Nate agrees. The place is silent, no chittering of radroaches or scrabbling of molerats. He lowers his gun, strolls in towards the ancient counter.

The floorboards crack under his boots like firecrackers, Nate jumps back and nearly falls over Dogmeat. “Oh-kay. Leave the bags here. Dogmeat, stay.”

The floorboards are creaking even under his weight, Nick sticks to the walls and starts sidling down towards the back rooms. Nate has the cash register open, and is putting his lockpicks to actual use cracking the little safe in the back wall.

Something pings in the back of Nick’s mind. Maybe it’s the layout, or maybe there aren’t many blacked out liquor shops in Old Nick’s past. “Think I might remember this place.”

Nate glances back from pulling the pile of ancient banknotes and a nice 10mm from the safe. He looks around the shop as though noticing it for the first time. “Vice squad?” There’s a long line of tension in those two words.

Nick hesitates. “I don’t know. Would it have been?”

“I _think_ this was the place that sold dirty pictures.” Nate starts checking the back doors- but it looks like the back of the house has caved in. “Pity.”

And- maybe Old Nick __had__  been in the Vice Squad, Nick pinches the bridge of his nose. “I think it might have been downstairs.” Nate __looks__ at him. “If it helps, I don’t think it got beyond tip-offs.” Vice squad. He would have sworn Old Nick had never been part of it, but- there are too many blank spaces, “I’m not sure.”

Nate sighs, “Not surprised.” He walks over, and kisses Nick’s cheek. “You’re too nice, s’not something I’d want to remember either.”

Arresting streetwalkers and smut dancers and beautiful young men in dresses. Wrecking lives pointlessly in the name of a law so utterly bankrupt- Nick winces, no, not really.

Nate lowers himself to the floor carefully, fingers splaying on the cracked wood. Nick kneels down and points the torch down through the cracks. “Looks like something’s down there.”

Nick smiles. “Want to come down there and look-”

The floorboard cracks like a gunshot. There’s a cloud of dust and Nate vanishes in a startled gasp.

“Nate!” The hole is about a meter across. It’s hard to see anything through the dust, but Nate’s pipboy lights up the room below green through the floorboards. “Are you hurt?” He points the flashlight through the hole.

“Um-” he’s fine. “I think so.” Nate coughs. “I landing on something- flexible.”

Nick looks around, the cupboard. He knocks the drinks bottles to the ground, and slides it across to the hole. “Make some space!”

“Done.”

The floorboards crack and splinter under the weight. Nick braces the cupboard and slides it down into the basement. It creaks warningly, but settles with a foot or so standing clear. “Okay?”

“Um, yeah.” Nate sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. “Nick- you really, really _have_  to see this. Bring the bags.”

Nick gets their things and pats Dogmeat. “Don’t think you can climb ladders boy, you stay and keep watch.” Dogmeat pants, then whines as Nick gets his legs down into the hole and slides down carefully. The cupboard has settled on top of a pile of half rotted pile of brightly coloured plastic- clothes? They slip under his feet and smell strangely sweet and decaying.

Nick steadies himself on the wall and looks around. The room looks like- Nick has no idea. A cross between a raider hideout and a _really_ strange weapons store, with books thrown in.

It’s a good place to start. Nate’s crouched down beside a half collapsed shelf. Most of the books actually seem intact. “Well, we’ll have something for the library.”

Nate looks up, his shoulders are shaking and his face is flushed deep red. He’s biting his lip. “No way are we letting kids near this stuff.” He holds up a book.

It’s an art book. The drawings are ink, clear and crisp and precise and very good. Two very muscular men in leather are having sex on a motorcycle. Nick grins. “Ah, __that__  kind of dirty picture shop.”

“What, you think I’d go to a place to see naked ladies?” Nate crosses his eyes, sticks his tongue out.

At least it looks like it didn’t get raided. Nick glances through the titles, erotic art books, hand printed pulp fiction, some rather interesting how-to manuals. Nate is flicking through happily and Nick imagines, for a moment, a young Nate. Not all that younger than now, with a stash of dirty books under his mattress, flicking through the pages under the covers.

Then Old Nick breaks into the reverie, Old Nick, leased out to the Vice Squad. Kicking the door down, charging in with guns drawn, _down on the ground! Hands up! Hands up!_

Or maybe a underground nightclub, men dancing with men, women with women, and maybe a nice young man, in a red dress, a little too young, a little too out of his depth.

Nick can’t feel sick. He doesn’t eat. He doesn’t have a stomach. But something feels wrong in his coolant. He pulls Nate in a little closer, Nate cuddles against him happily, flicking through the book. “I love this artist.”

It’s not quite Nick’s style, he likes things a little more teasing and less blatant, but yeah, he can see it. It must have been nice for young Nate to see a world in which people like him were- open and unashamed and happy, even if it was in hand drawn porn.

He’d seen John having sex with Fred on a motorcycle once. Had more than slightly public sex himself with Nate in the Third Rail. Honestly privacy did seem like something of the past now he thought of it. Looking down as Nate flips through the pages, he’s probably seen most of these situations, actually.

“Nateling.” Nick murmurs, and kisses the crown of his head. Nate hums happily and presses up against him. “What were they selling in the rest of this place?”

“Um,” Nate looks up, smiles. He presses a kiss to Nick’s lips very lightly. “This is- you know our, um, games? In bed?”

Oh. Those games. Yes. “Yes.” Nick manages.

“They sell props.”

Nick looks around. The only thing he can halfway recognises are the handcuffs. Actually- he gets up and checks. Padded handcuffs! Nate might like having bloody wrists but it always makes Nick’s coolant churn. He picks them up, the leather padding is slightly cracked, but they still look good.

He glances back at Nate, he’s hovering a few paces back, uncertain. “You- like them?”

There’s something hopeful there. Nick looks around. There are things here he can’t even _begin_ to imagine what they are meant for. “You bought a lot from this place?”

“I wish.” Nate grins. “Just the books. But I did… day-dream.”

Okay. Nick looks around. The ropes, he gets. Most of them are half rotted, but there are some nice nylon ones still in good condition, and- oh, is those silk ribbons? He _likes_ Nate in silk. They are faded, but a few still hold up in bright red. Mmmm. Yes.

Nate grins, picks up his pack, and empties it on the ground. Half dismantled cameras and typewriters and __far__  too many packs of abraxo cleaner pile on the ground. “Here.” Nate grins. “You go shopping.”

“And what about you?” Nick picks up the choicest pieces and starts packing them away.

“Um,” Nate looks around. “There isn’t anything here I wouldn’t want to try.”

Nick glances around. Picks up a huge black whip with six tails that looks like something you could kill deathclaws with. Looks at Nate.

Nate bites his lip. “I am so turned on right now.” He takes the whip, “It’s really soft, you’d have to put nails in there to do any damage. It wouldn’t even bruise.” A pause. “I’m not into nails.” Another. “Your cigarettes though, that’s um- I’ll shut up.”

Nick takes it back, lets the tails trail over Nate’s hands, his cheek. Nate’s eyes drift closed and his exhales shakily. He is really, _really_ into this. Nick weighs the whip in his hands, it is soft, but the leather is thick and sturdy even after all this time. He looks at Nate, pictures him naked, and Nick, with the whip, striking him. It might not bruise, but it would raise welts and- Nick is feeling two very contradictory emotions to this.

“Don’t know if this is my scene.” He hands Nate the whip back.

Nate hesitates, looks away. He’s trying to find the right words. “I’d like it.” He says carefully. “But only if you were enjoying it too. If you aren’t, I don’t want to do it.”

Nick nods. “We can try, who knows? It might be after all.” And gets a brilliant smile in return.

“Oh, lovely.” Nate purrs, stalks closer, presses against him and oh, Nick _wants._ And yes, suddenly the whip is entirely his scene and he wants to use it, land bright red blows across Nate’s back and chest and mark him __his__ oh yes yes _ _yes-__

He drops a hand to Nate’s hip, squeezes maybe just a little too hard. Nate hisses happily.

“So,” Nick leans in and bites lightly at the hollow of Nate’s throat, just above the cinch of his scarf. “We’ve got our whips and chains. What else do you like?”

“Um-” Nate’s eyes are bright, he must be really aroused. “Well, there’s all this.” Nate is a little unsteady on his feet as he stumbles over to the next shelf. There are a lot of balls and straps, large blackout eye coverings. “If you want me to be quiet-” He holds one of the balls up, opens his mouth to show where it would fit.

“No.” Nick takes it back. “I like it when you talk.” He cups Nate’s cheek and Nate just _melts_ , fluid and entirely overtaken with happiness. “I don’t like these either.” He brushes the blindfolds away. “If you want to pretend you’re with someone else-”

It’s too sharp, too cutting, Nate’s eyes go wide. “No! Just- it, you feel more. Less distractions. But yeah- you’re not into them. Forget it.”

Nick hesitates, but- no. He puts a hand on Nate’s shoulder, it’s not his fault. Nick isn’t upset. He feels the tension flow out of Nate’s body, and yes, that’s better. He casts around for something else to focus on and oh- _oh._

Nate follows his gaze, and giggles. “Oh. Yes. Those.”

The leather ones are almost entirely rotten, but there are a few plastic and- goodness, _glass_  ones- that are perfectly fine. A few harnesses hang up on the wall, and Nick can see where they would slot in, be worn low and comfortably, perfectly angled-

“Um.” Nate is distinctly red around the neck and cheeks. “If you want- if that’s okay- yes. I mean- yes.”

And oh Nick can imagine it, __has__  imagined it. Maybe he has dreamed of this. Nate draped over his desk, open and panting. Pressed up against the wall, trembling and desperate. Here. Just here, on a pile of the soft decayed plastic, legs spread, rock hard and _wanting _.__

He’s seen Nate like that before, of course, but only had his mouth and hands to use before. This would be- something new. Yes.

“I- oh Atom.” Nate rubs his forehead. “I love what we do. I don’t __want__  you to think I’m not completely happy- but if you wanted, I’d really like that too. But only if you wanted it. Really. Not just for me.”

Does he? It feels- like a mockery. Nick wonders what he would feel if he didn’t have Old Nick’s memories. If he was like Dima. Would he just jump at the chance to fuck Nate with these prostheses? See it as an opportunity instead of a- a mockery? Pretending to something he wasn’t? Pretending to be a human being, with all the parts he didn’t have?

Nate hooks his chin over Nick’s shoulders, hands coming up around his waist. The trembling, feverish heat of him soaks through both layers of their clothing. God, Nick loves him.

Old Nick had loved Jenny. Nick wonders what they would have done had Nick had an- accident. If he’d ended up like Nick. Had been unable to give Jenny what she wanted. Would he have come to a place like this, and bought something like this, so she could be happy?

Yes. That feels a hell of a lot better. It feels fair, and sensible. Nick picks up a particularly nice looking number, pretty much perfectly preserved. Firm plastic, flexible. He feels Nate’s breath pick up, eager.

“Like it?”

“Oh fuck.” Nate groans. “Atom __yes__.” He ruts up against Nick and even through the thick cloth and kevlar of his coat, he’s very, very hard.

“I’m not figuring this out down here.” Nick picks out a sturdy looking harness, packs it and a few of the- well, yes, _dildos,_ in Nate’s pack. “We’re going somewhere with proper lighting, locking doors, and no chance of a deathclaw crashing the party.”

Nate nods happily, his eyes are a little glazed, just- lost in the moment. Nick smiles and gently pushes him back towards a likely looking pile of cloth. Maybe long ago it was some risque lingerie, but it’s long gone into piles of wispy cloth. “Hope you don’t want to dress up.”

“We can check it later.” Nate flumps down in a soft cloud of fluffy white. “Bet you’d like it,” he slurs, fingers fumbling with his coat. Nick settles down between Nate’s legs and gives him a hand. “I could get naughty slips and stockings and garter belts and- all that, under my dress, and then I’d take them off for you.” He grins, lopsided, “One at a time. I could dance it for you.”

Nick can’t get turned on. He doesn’t have the parts or the chemistry for it, but _damn it_ if Nate doesn’t get close. Right now, he _wants,_ blind and senseless and without direction. He untucks Nate’s scarf and gets his teeth into the lovely soft skin just above Nate’s collarbone.

Nate is turned on enough for both of them. His eyes roll back and he trembles, legs rigid. He’s close. This isn’t going to last long, more’s the pity. “Tell me what you want.” Nick’s voice drops, rougher. “This isn’t just about me. What do _you_ want, Nate Brooks?”

Nate groans at his name. “I- I want-” he chokes, gasps. “ _Fuck-_ I want you. I want you to- to scratch me with your hands so I’m bleeding. I want you to wrap your fingers round my neck so I can’t breathe. I want- _fuck fuck oh Atom _-__ want you to tell me what to do- tell me to crawl, beg, blow you. And I can now.” Another wonderful, slipshod smile. “Oh yeah, I want to blow you. Anytime.”

Nick nods. He’s got Nate’s coat open. He always wears that red dress under it, and it's limp and damp with sweat, clinging tight to Nate’s scrawny body. He runs his metal fingers across Nate’s ribs, ducking down to the hollow of his abdomen, sharp against the protruding hipbones. Nate keens.

“Keep talking.” Nick breathes into his ear. Licks. Nate’s hips cant up desperately. “Everything you want.”

“I- I- _oh fuck-_ I want you to- to tie me up.” Nate shudders, his whole body caught up in it, helpless. “Do- anything you want to me. Fuck me. Beat me with that- with that whip.” He’s close. Nick pulls the hem of the dress up to free Nate’s rock hard cock, pressed up tight inside his underpants. Nate’s eyes are closed, breathing coming in short, heavy gasps. “Put you- your cigarettes out on me. On my skin.”

“I’ll hurt you.” Nick murmurs.

Nate groans. “I’d like that.” His eyes half slit open, yellowish amusement and suddenly in control again. “I get hurt by way worse people. I’d like it to be you.”

Nick nods, not agreeing, but not saying no. He presses his metal hand, palm flat on Nate’s cock. The heat of it is an almost painful shock and Nate groans, so loud and sudden Nick can’t help but glance up to make sure no one else heard.

“I don’t know what I want.” Nick whispers, face pressed close until he can smell Nate’s close-cropped hair, sweat and plastic and leather from his gasmask. “But I want it with you. Whatever it is.”

Nate’s mouth pulls up into a truly brilliant smile. “Yes.” It’s breathtaking. “Anything. With you.”

Nick kisses him, reaches into his pants and grasps him. Two strokes and Nate comes like a gunshot, back buckling, cresting into a perfect arch. Head thrown back and eyes and mouth open, breathless and speechless as though Nick had just delivered all the secrets of the universe, just for him.

And so Nick just has to lean in and spoil it, taste Nate’s mouth all over again. He tastes of mutifruit and tea, and the bloodleaf roots he uses to clean his teeth. Nate breathes harder into Nick’s mouth, his body trembles and twitches, too overwhelmed to do anything more.

“You’re mine.” Nick whispers. After all this, he can say it, when sometimes he’d been too scared to _think it_ , for fear Nate would be snatched away if he did. He feels Nate smile against his mouth. “I love you.”

It’s still difficult to say, comes out stiff and stilted, like he’s quoting from somewhere rather than just- talking. Saying the absolutely truth. Nate opens his eyes, “Love you too.” And why can’t Nick say it like that, so easy and happy and natural? Maybe it’s practice. Maybe he should try more often. “So much.” His arms come around Nick, pulls him close, Nick’s probably getting cum all over his coat but oh well, it’s had much worse.

He kisses Nate again, and again, and Nate kisses back, and for a few minutes there’s something but that and Nick is very glad he can hold off on breathing for a while. Then Nick slides off next to Nate and there’s a lot of cuddling and arms and legs everywhere and Nick gets a foot caught in Nate’s coat and Nate’s head bumps into Nick’s jaw a bit too hard but it doesn’t matter. It should be this way. It’s perfect.

“I didn’t do anything.” Nate murmurs, and digs his hands under Nick’s coat. Nick gently catches his hands, and pulls them away. Not now, it would just be a distraction and Nick is very, very happy where he is. “I didn’t do anything for you.” Nate frowns sleepily.

“You did everything.” Nick kisses him again. “I’m pretty damn happy.”

“I’m gonna fall asleep.” Nate yawns, gets his face in the v of Nick’s shirt, breath warm on his skin.

“S’as good a place as any.” Nick looks around. Dogmeat’s outside and can warn them if anything comes near, this place is warm and comfortable and dry, and after a nap they can carry on shopping.

“Okay.” Nate sighs, closes his eyes. “Don’t leave,”

“Couldn’t pay me to move.” Nick hugs him, holds on until he feels Nate’s body go limp under his arms, his breathing evening into sleep. Nick lies back beside Nate on the pile of ancient stockings and negligees and goodness knows what, and looks up at the cracks ceiling.

Funny, but he’s beginning to see what Nate means now. He does wonder if anyone, before the bombs, could have possibly been as happy as he is, right now.


	10. Open, Bare and Entire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick and Nate have an evening in, and Nick makes a breakthrough.

It’s a warm night. The rain is coming soft and rattling on the roof. The room smells of smoke and hubflower tea. Nick has a cigarette in an ashtray, a coffee mug in hand. And Nate in the other arm.

There’s a quiet promise in the warm curl of his body, one leg thrown over both of Nick’s. Shoulder pressed in tight, stirring slightly as he sips tea. Nate’s eyes are hungry, gleaming above the mug. Nick puts down the mug, turns, tilts Nate’s chin up. Sweet lips, fragrant with hubflower. Mmmm.

Nate’s mouth moves against his, opens, slick and liquid. His hands meet Nick’s, stroke up his arm. There’s the brief touch of warm fingers on his wrist, the flash of white hot heat on the bare metal. It’s a flash of shock, fear, hunger.

The hands spider up to his shoulders, strokes along his collar. Nate’s mouth turns, deepens the kiss, swallows hungrily against him. His fingers dip down, trace the struts of his neck, down under his coat and-

He is __wanted__. This beat up, raddled old body that even he isn’t much fond of, is desired. It’s wonderful, intimate. Terrifying.

He pulls away when Nate starts on the buttons. “Sorry.” He shakes his head.

And Nate- has at least learnt something, because his hands drop quickly from the fastenings. “It’s my fault,” he murmurs through swollen, wet lips, smooths Nick’s coat. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” Nick picks the mug out of his hands, puts it down beside his own, “Here.” Kisses again, sweet and soft and hot.

Nate has very, very long legs. They coil up around Nick, one over his back, another pressed tight against his legs. Pulling Nick down into the sofa.

The ancient springs creak, Nate settles on his back. Nick has his neck, his shoulder. The long line from jaw to ear. There’s a slight beading of sweat along the tight curls of Nate’s hair, the faint taste of salt. Nate’s cock is stiff and hard between them, caught in the tight red satin of his dress.

“Gonna stain,” Nate purrs, arches his back to hike up the skirt. He’s taken advantage of Diamond City’s running water, the skin of his legs is a smooth, even dark copper. The tight, dark knit of hair around his cock. Nick lowers his head, hesitates. Nate has a lovely cock, dark umber flush, veins swollen and standing free, the head dark pink and already faintly leaking. “Nick- can you-” his eyes drift closed. “Can you take your coat off?”

Nick smiles, undoes the buttons. The coat slides off his shoulders and- the fear. It’s not logical, but then, when is it? Sloughing off a layer of self, like a stingwing growing out of a skin only- the opposite. Growing smaller, growing less.

It would be the work of a moment to bend down and take Nate into his mouth. He tastes good, warm and wonderful and just being so close is more than enough.

But he hesitates. Nate stirs, open his eyes. He’s lax and hungry, legs half canted up. “Want to go to bed?”

“Yeah.” Nick purrs. There’s a deep hungry flush across his chest, up his neck. Nick traces out out with his bare hand, enjoying the shifts of heat, the pulse of blood. The racing of his heart as he presses a hand against Nate’s throat.

“We go to bed, and I’ll take all my clothes off.”

Nate’s eyes go wide. His mouth opens, then closes. His cock twitches against Nick’s stomach. Abdomen. Whatever part he has down there. “Really?” Nate croaks. 

“Hmmhm.” Nick smiles, sits back, holds out a hand for Nate to take. Nate snatches his hand, eyes shining. He wants him. By god or- Atom, or whoever. Nate wants him so badly. Nick- wants to want him like that. Wishes he had the parts, the lust, the __body__ , to be worthy of that. 

Well. Maybe it’s time to find out. He opens his arms and draws Nate in, feels the heat of his body through the satin of his dress, the worn cotton of his shirt. God, by any name, he loves Nate.

The bed is worn, a little tatty. Nick double checks the door is locked, and walks over to the bag where they have their- props. He digs through, and pulls out the soft padded handcuffs. Nate’s eyes just- light up. He’d been expecting a fun night and it turned out to be a wonderful one. “Yes,” His voice is low, husky. “Fuck yes.”

“I-” Nick pauses, takes a breath. “Don’t touch me.”

Nate blinks, a little addled with lust. He throws off his dress, strips off the little panties. Naked and lovely.

“I’m going to take off my clothes.” Nick takes a breath. “Don’t touch me.”

“Okay.” Nate breathes. He sits down on the bed, scoots up until his back is tight against the bedstead, holds up his wrists for the cuffs.

Nick leans in, clips one cuff, winds it through the bedstead, clips the other. Nate pulls a few times, testing the give. He smiles. “Can’t touch you now.”

Nick nods. Gets up on the bed, sits up on his knees and shuffles up until he’s straddling Nate’s lap. He looks away. “Nick.”

He looks up, Nate is smiling. “Nick. You could have a deathclaw under there and it wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Yeah, well you like deathclaws.” Nick smiles, starts on the buttons of his shirt.

“I like you better.”

“Sure you do. Now hush.”

“Thought you liked me talking.” Nate smiles, but shuts up.

Nick doesn’t have many shirts. This one worn thin and he’s had to sew the buttons back on more times than he cares to remember. It’s easier to think about that, than what he is doing right now.

The shirt is open, hangs limp from his shoulders. He has an undershirt beneath that, but his skin is bare to his chest. Nate can see the whole of the damage to his throat, the long tear along where his collarbone should be. White metal glaring through the hole in his skin.

“It gets worse.” Nick sighs.

“I’d say it gets better.” Nate smiles.

“Hush.”

He pulls the shirt off. His arms, bare to the shoulder. The skin gone to the elbow on his right arm, patchy on his left. He tries to smile. Nate smiles back, a real one. “You know I love your hand.”

Nick nods, takes a breath. Gets a good grip on his undershirt, and pulls.

It comes free from his pants, draws up over the bare skin of his body, up and up and over his head and- that is it. Gone. He throws the undershirt to the floor. Nate has seen this before, he probably saw a hell of a lot more when he fixed him up but this- this is different. Intimate.

Nate is quiet, but his eyes are warm and knowing, loving. Nick’s hands hesitate on his belt, clinched tight around his metal bones. Nate’s expression doesn’t change, just the same. Well, he hasn’t seen this.

He doesn’t draw it out, hooks thumbs over his pants, underwear, and pulls down down in one. Draws up his legs, one at a time. His knee’s worn through the skin on his right leg, stripped down the shin on his left. Patches of steel and wires through the cladding. Shoes and socks gone with them and- done.

That’s- that’s it. Everything he is. Nick the detective. Nick of Diamond City. That man is scatted all over the floor. Nick Valentine. Nick hugs himself, bare skin, exposed wires. He’s just- just a synth. Not even a name, gen 2. There are so many, just like him, crawling through the Commonwealth.

“Hey.” Nate murmurs. “Stay here.” Nick looks up. “Where you were going. Don’t go there. Stay here. I love you. I love all of you.”

“You shoot things like me every week.” Its the wrong thing to say. Nate’s face locks up, he looks sick. “I- I’m sorry.”

“No.” Nate looks away. “I do. Do you know how- how fucking hard that is? To shoot at something you’re trying not to look at?”

Nick cannot speak for a moment, swallows. “I love you.” Nate croaks. “Every week, I shoot people that look like you. It- it hurts. I don’t want it not to hurt. Okay?” He tries to smile, weak and uncertain. “Can we get back to having sex?”

He’s not even half hard now. Nick leans over, settles in until he’s sitting in Nate’s lap. That gets a reaction, a nice twitch against his thigh. Nate smiles, and it comes out much better, and Nick strokes a hand down his throat, over his chest. Nate sighs, tries to lean in as much as he had, fingers gripping the bedstead bars, the handcuffs. He plays his fingertips over Nate’s collarbone, the dusky round points of nipples. Nate hisses, rolls his hips to try and find contact.

Even without his clothes, like this, Nate wants him. It makes Nick smile. He pinches the tip of a nipple between his steel fingers and Nate groans, closes his eyes, sighs happily. He arches his back to grind up against Nick’s thighs, the anonymous joint between legs and body. “You’d want me to put on a cock, then?”

“Dear Atom yes.” Nate breathes, shivering. Nick shifts back, locks his thighs around Nate’s cock. Heat, slick, the faint, clear residue of precum on the stained skin of his thighs. Nate groans, pulls on the cuffs, slips down and joins Nick’s rhythm, grinding, thrusting in and out. “Ah,” gasped. “Aha. Oh.”

“Good?”

“Atom yes.” Nate’s eyes slit open, glittering. “I- I’d fuck you. Have you fuck me. I- oh god. Yes.”

“Even now?” Anonymous, fleshless. Inhuman. Not Nick the detective. Not Nick Valentine. Just some- some synth, kicked out of the Institute.

“What- what the hell’s changed?” Nate chokes. Arches his back. “You- you’re beautiful. You know that right?”

Nick looks down at himself. He’s missing two of the smaller panels on his sides, the skin he has is gray and discolored. Not even passably human. “How can you even say that?”

“It’s- it’s you.” Nate swallows, his body shudders. Nick clenches his thighs together, he hisses. “I love you, so much. You look amazing. It’s you. I- I’m gonna- __Nick__ -”

“Yeah.” Nick leans in, strokes a hand over Nate’s face. Lets his free hand drift down to join their bodies, wrap around the head of Nate’s cock. “All yours. God knows you’re the only one.”

Nate laughs, cracking. “You- you need __glasses__. You can’t see- any number of people would want-”

“Sure.” Nick kisses him.

“Shit- I-” Nate shudders, and comes in his hand. He can feel each hungry pulse, fire hot and trembling as Nate tries to arch under him, wrists turning and turning and pulling taut against the cuffs. White against Nick’s hand, his thighs and stomach. He can smell Nate on his skin, hot and vital and alive.

He works every shudder out of him, traces out the veins in his cock, ekes out every trembling muscle, every last gasp. Hungry and beautiful. Nate’s body star studded with sweat, shaking and panting and all his.

“Pet.” Nick breathes. Is about to wipe his hands on his discarded clothes- then changes his mind and wipes them on his stomach. Let it stay. Let it stay forever. God knows he’s got worse stains. He can smell Nate on his own body, sweat and cum and __him.__  “Nateing.”

“God.” Nate breathes, “Atom.” Face turned up to the ceiling, panted blessing. “Can I-” He moves his hands.

Nick hesitates. “I won’t-” Nate swallows. “Tell me when to stop. I’ll stop. I promise.”

“Alright.” The handcuffs don’t have a key, just a catch. Nick finds it, presses, the cuffs pop free. Nate slumps down, the chain rattles as it draws through the headboard, clinks and falls to the floor. Nate’s hands are red around the wrists, his fingers a little swollen. They trace out Nick’s shoulders, the long groove along his back where his spine should be. The alien juts of his steel hips.

“This okay?” Nate whispers.

“Yes.” Warm, safe. Nate against him, the scent of him clinging. Alive, vivid as any clothes. Wrapped around him over and over. More than a machine.

“I’m lucky.” Nate breathes. “So lucky. You know how many people d’have you?”

“And how many are-” he stops that right now. __The Institute.__ Nate doesn’t need to hear that.

“None.” Nate snaps. “Me, Hancock, Irma, Kent, probably about half the Atom Cats. Most of the Slog. You’ve seen the way Glory looks at you? What about Sturges? Hell, that’s just who I’ve noticed. Probably there’s lot more. You-” his voice cracks, just a little. He huddles close, face only an inch or so from Nick’s. “You can do a lot better, honestly.”

__What?_ _

“Don’t make me say it again.” Nate presses his face against his chest, mouth moving against his skin, warm breath. “I don’t think I- I’m so fucked up, you could- you don’t have to- I can’t say any more. I want you. Stop making me try to convince you to leave. I- I couldn’t stand it.”

“I’m not leaving.” Nick hugs him. It feels like being dropped into another world, some new reality. “I’m not sure you’re not imagining things, though.”

“Pretty sure I’m not.” Nate kisses his cheek, trails damp lips down and licks the raw edges of his throat. “Anyone’d want you. You’re sexy and brave and sweet and you look after people and you’re- probably the best person most people have ever met.”

“I’m a beat up old synth.”

“And most of us are beat up old humans.” Nate’s mouth traces over his skull, maps across the bare skin of his head and down over the raw line of metal bisecting his scalp. “We aren’t exactly silver screen material.”

“I could see you there.” Nick strokes a hand down Nate’s side. “One of the starlets, with a cigarette holder, and red lipstick.”

“And you’re the hardbitten detective,” Nate smiles. “You’re definitely in there too.”

“Solving cases together,” He kisses Nate.

“Nah, I’d be the case.” Nate shifts over, slides down until Nick is half on top of him. “One of those sexy __fatale__  types who come in, all seduction and sin and long legs. Gotten in over my head, need a helping hand from a handsome old private eye.” He strokes Nick’s face. “I’d do anything for your help, detective,” he purrs in Nick’s ear, “ _ _Anything.__ ” His breath tickles, runs cold electricity down Nick’s spine.

Nick turns his face, brushes a rough kiss over Nate’s lips. “I can waive my fees for a __special__ customer.”

“Oh, I can make it worth your while.” Nate wriggles happily under him. The long line of his bare body against Nick’s. It’s- delicious. Carnal, sensual. Nick lowers his face to the crook of Nate’s neck and latches on to the bare skin. Taste of sweet sweat; the warm, tempered smell of his body. Nick bites down, very lightly to begin with, then harder, the tensile strength of the flesh against the demanding pressure of his worn steel teeth.

Nate shivers, throws a leg over Nick’s body. His cock is pressed against Nick’s abdomen, still soft, slick and satisfied. There is no demand here, no need, just them and their bodies and- anything they want to do.

Nick lets Nate’s skin slip from his mouth, licks the spot, mouths over it, sucks. There’s going to be a bruise there come tomorrow, and Nick feels nothing but pride. __Mine. Mine mine mine.__ “Mine.”

And maybe he should be wondering who that is. Who he is dedicating Nate’s body to. Nick Valentine is in pieces on the floor. Who is in the bed?

“You.” Nate answers kisses his damp mouth. “Just you.”

“And who’s that?” Nick murmurs, against his mouth.

“You think anyone could answer that?” Another kiss. “You, me, anyone else?”

Maybe no. Maybe- everyone feels like this, look in the mirror and wonder who that is. Reel off a list of facts- __detective, gen 2, Diamond City, clean shot, smoker, lover, agnostic -__  and feel their inherent hollowness, the inadequacy of them.

He slides off Nate’s body, pulls him close. Nate Brooks. __Human, vault dweller, queer, mixed race, sniper, hacker, safe cracker, trauma, eating disorder.__  The words can’t even come close to the reality in his arms. Maybe you need to stand on the outside to see people in their entirety.

Nate hums happily, closes his eyes. His breath is soft against Nick’s neck. The mark on his neck is coming up flushed red ocher. His fingers trail over to find Nick’s, and twine with his steel hand. The warmth of him soaks into the metal, rushes up Nick’s arm, heats all the way up his shoulder, into the bones of his chest.

“I love you.” Nate murmurs. He’s starting to slip off to sleep.

“I know.” Nick kisses the back of his head. “I love you too.” And the words are a little easier to say, feel more real and well fitting than ever before.


End file.
